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The Signs of the Times 



He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It 
will be fair weather : for the sky is red. 

And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day : for the sky is red 
and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but 
can ye not discern the signs of the times ? — Matt. xvi. 2, 3. 




M. J. 



SAVAGE 




BOSTON 



Geo. H. Ellis, 141 Franklin Street 
1889 




Copyright 
By George H. Ellis 
1889 



\ 



TO 

THE INCREASING NUMBERS, IN ALL SECTS, WHO ARE COMING TO 
DISCERN THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES MORE AND MORE 
CLEARLY, THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED. 



CONTENTS 



I. Break-up of the Old Orthodoxy 9 

II. The Roman Church 24 

III. Liberal Orthodoxy 41 

IV. Unitarianism 56 

V. Free Religion and Ethical Culture ... 71 

VI. Scientific Materialism 87 

VII. Ingersollism 99 

VIII. Religious Reaction 115 

IX. Mind Cure 128 

X. Spiritualism 142 

XI. Break-ups that mean Advance 158 

XII. The New City of God 173 



BREAK-UP OF THE OLD ORTHODOXY: 

WHY MEN DO NOT BELIEVE IT. 



In taking up a series of subjects like this which I propose 
under the general title " Signs of the Times," I have some- 
thing far more important in mind than merely to amuse you 
by the treatment of topics that may be uppermost in the 
popular mind ; something more important than merely criti- 
cising my neighbors, finding fault with or commending them; 
something more important than the giving of lectures. It 
seems to me that the one great thing which thoughtful, ear- 
nest men to-day need is to understand the age in which they 
live and of which they are a part. The influence we can 
exert may be comparatively little, and to us, in the modest 
estimate which we set upon ourselves, may seem so insignifi- 
cant as to make us feel that it is hardly worth while to 
trouble ourselves as to the direction in which this -influence 
is cast; yet, if you think a moment, you will see that the ten- 
dency of the age, the great trend of influence that means 
either decay or progress, is simply the resultant of these 
individual influences of ours. And which way the age shall 
move is a mere question, so far as we are concerned, of the 
majority influence, — as to whether more people shall be intel- 
ligently interested in having the world go in the right direction 
than in the wrong. It is, then, of vast importance that we 
comprehend, so far as may be, the age in which we live, and 
understand the forces and the movements around us. It 



10 



Signs of the Times 



is not strange that we get confused, that we find ourselves 
drawn this way and that, that men mistake the eddy for the 
main current ; for we are ourselves in the midst of this cur- 
rent. It sometimes seems to us that we are hardly more 
than a chip or a fragment of bark floating on the current, 
swirled about by it, turned this way and that whithersoever 
it will. It needs, then, that every man for himself, or else 
some one that he can trust for him, should gain some higher 
point of outlook if possible, should be able to look before 
and after, should know which way the world has been moving 
for certain centuries, so getting in mind the sweep of things, 
being able thus to separate between the main current and 
the eddies, and so discover which way lies the hope of man- 
kind. It is some general work like this — an attempt, as far 
as may be, to help you comprehend what is going on, the 
meaning of the great forces and movements of which we are 
a part — that I have in mind. It is not for speculative ends 
or to satisfy your curiosity, but to help you know which way 
you ought to think, which way you ought to move, which way 
you ought to try to turn the thought and effort of others. It 
is for some such end as this that I have undertaken the work 
which now lies open before me. 

We have not to go back very far in the history of the 
world to find a time when substantially all the people in 
Christendom believed about the same thing. They looked 
out with substantially the same eyes. They had substantially 
the same conceptions of God in their minds. They believed 
substantially the same things about the origin, the nature, 
and the destiny of mankind. They were at one on all main 
points. They answered, in some rough way at least, to the 
definition of the Catholic doctrine which has been held for 
many years. There was this homogeneity of belief at least 
throughout Christendom. But now what do we see ? The 



Break-up of the Old Orthodoxy 1 1 

Church, whether people were loyal to it or not, whether peo- 
ple attended the services or not, — the Church then stood for 
and represented what were practically the common ideas of 
all Christendom. But to-day what ? We have only to open 
our eyes and look about us, we have only to listen to the 
complaints that come to us from the pulpits, from the reviews, 
from the religious and secular newspapers, to see that the 
Church no longer holds the position which it once did in 
either the faith or the reverence of mankind. Men used to 
believe that the Church held the gift of salvation. The ma- 
jority of people to-day perhaps believe nothing of the sort. 
They believe that the Church is a good thing, that it stands 
for certain high ideas, that it exerts a certain fine, elevating 
influence in society. Many people believe that the doctrines 
of the Church do really embody the one God-given plan for 
human salvation. But there are very few people who think 
that it is absolutely necessary to be a member of the Church 
or even to attend church, in order to please God or to serve 
their fellow-men. The Church, in other words, has no longer 
any such hold as it used to have on the belief, the reverence, 
or the practical obedience of men. There is a great break- 
up. The fragments are moving, and taking shape in this 
direction and that. The Roman Church itself feels the 
change. There is a process of disintegration going on within 
it. I shall have occasion to treat of this by and by. I only 
call your attention to it this morning. 

The old Protestant Orthodoxy is being divided into in- 
numerable sects. That was true a hundred years ago ; but 
there is a change going on now by which one form has come 
to be representative of Liberal Orthodoxy, — a new kind of 
Orthodoxy, which the old does not recognize. The thoughts 
that it stands for are creeping into the work of foreign mis- 
sions. They are disturbing the foundations of theological 



12 



Signs of the Times 



institutions. They are at work in the minds of ministers, 
leading them to practically neglect or overlook the doctrines 
no longer acceptable to their congregations. The human 
element is coming forward. This great change of thought 
has also touched Unitarianism, which we in a way repre- 
sent. There are Free Religion, Ethical Culture, Scientific 
Materialism, Ingersollism, Agnosticism in all its depart- 
ments. Then, the head of man having become puzzled in 
its attempts to solve this great universe, the heart, too, finds 
itself hungering for spiritual food. There are signs on all 
hands of reaction from the extreme materialistic or purely 
agnostic tendencies ; and so people, having lost their faith, 
are borrowing the old-time faiths of the East, and we find 
people rushing back not only into old organizations, but im- 
porting Theosophy, Metaphysics, Christian Science. Then 
that heart-hungering of the world for some whisper from 
beyond has given us Spiritualism. I simply refer to these 
things this morning as indications of this great break-up of 
the old beliefs. We are in the midst of the confusion and 
the conflicting demands of a thousand people, who are tell- 
ing us that this way or that or the other lies the hope of 
mankind. 

My purpose this morning is to help to answer the question 
as to why this condition of things is upon us. What has 
happened ? Are the movements of which we are a part 
to-day indications that there is nothing true, nothing certain ? 
Do they mean the decay of religion ? Do they mean the loss 
of faith ? Do they mean the dying out of reverence ? or do 
they mean that mankind is ceasing to aspire, to care for spir- 
itual satisfaction, that it is going to be content hereafter with 
this little world, and the common business and social engage- 
ments of life ? Does it mean a revolution against recogniz- 
ing and acknowledging truth? Is it impiety, this lack of 



Break-up of the Old Orthodoxy 



13 



reverence for, or faith in the old churches ? Is it because 
the world is more ignorant than it used to be ? Or, if there 
has been an increase in knowledge, as we love to boast, has 
there gone along with it a spiritual pride, which refuses to 
bow the neck to God's truth merely because it does not like 
it ? Is the world, along with its wisdom, growing morally 
worse? What is the matter? What has happened that these 
old faiths should be no longer believed ? 

In answering these questions, I shall be obliged to re- 
handle, in another way and for another purpose, some points 
with which my preaching in the past years has already made 
you more or less familiar. Yet there are some truths so fun- 
damental, so important, and that it seems to me are so little 
felt and appreciated by the majority of even liberal men, 
that perhaps I should not go astray if I repeated them over 
and over again until they had become familiarized, every-day, 
matter-of-fact truths to the common consciousness of the 
world. 

We need to start with the thought that this race of ours 
began in childhood, weak, helpless, ignorant, in the midst 
of a universe that we have found to be practically infinite. 
That is, the race began knowing nothing practically, — a little 
weak, infantile race, looking this way and that, imagining 
something here, building up its little theories, getting its 
ideas as best it could from its limited experience, finding 
out that it was wrong, trying to correct its errors, to get new 
and better thoughts. And so tentatively, through its strug- 
gles age after age, this race of ours has been growing slowly 
from the beginning. That is the point that you need to 
keep in mind as the key of this whole great problem. You 
need to remember that at first it was inevitable that the 
child-world should have childish thoughts about the world, 
about God, about itself, about man, about the future. So 



14 



Signs of the Times 



that instead of doing as men have been taught to do, accus- 
tomed to do for ages, look backward for wisdom, we ought 
to look backward for childishness. The common idea, that 
has been almost universal for hundreds of years, that the 
faiths and the beliefs of the old-time people, of the former 
times, of the patriarchs, of the prophets, were somehow 
nearer to God and nearer true than the beliefs of to-day, 
has sprung out of the theory of things which taught us that 
the world began in perfection and fell away from it. But, 
since we have found out that it is not true, we must simply 
reverse that old conception of things. We must remember 
that the old age of the world or the mature thoughts of the 
world, those thoughts that ought to be treated reverently 
because of their presumed merit, those that are more likely 
to be nearer the truth, are the thoughts of the grown-up 
world of to-day and not the thoughts of the childhood world 
of the olden time. Paul says, " When I was a child, I spake 
as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child ; but 
when I became a man I put away childish things." So the 
world, when it was a child, spake as a child, understood as 
a child, thought as a child ; and in the child-understanding, 
the child-speaking, the child-thinking of the antique world, 
is the birth of all old religions. From that day until this, 
however, the world has been growing, — growing through 
youth, through early manhood, towards mature age. For 
I wish you to understand that it is my serious conviction 
that it is only here and there that some little fragment of 
the world deserves even yet to be called civilized. The 
people who shall be alive a thousand years from to-day will 
look back upon and talk of the crudeness of this nineteenth 
century, with as much grown-up compassion as we regard 
to-day the crudeness of the Middle Ages, and with equal 
reason. I speak of this simply to emphasize and enforce 



Break-up of the Old Orthodoxy 



15 



this thought : that this humanity of ours is God's child, born 
in weakness and in ignorance, but that it has been growing 
all these ages, these thousands of years, and is yet far from 
having got its growth. This, then, is the key that we need 
to keep in mind. We need to remember that every religion 
has simply been the attempt of this child-world to think the 
truth about its world, about its God, about itself, about 
the relation in which it stands to God. For every religion 
the wide world over from the beginning till to-day has been 
nothing more nor less than the attempt on the part of man 
to get into right relations to the Unseen, the Infinite Father. 
Every religion has made that attempt. And, if Christianity 
be a grander religion than any that the world has ever seen, 
it is simply because it is the religion of the most civilized 
races, the ones that have come nearer to having true 
thoughts about the universe and God, because it is the 
religion of those races that have been the most highly de- 
veloped as to morals, because they have come a little nearer 
to the truth, not because there is anything exceptional or 
miraculous about them, not because they stand apart in a 
class by themselves as having the one true religion, looking 
down upon all the others as false. 

I wish now to have you keep this one thought in mind : that, 
the farther back you go, the cruder, the more barbaric, the 
poorer the religion you find ; and this is just what you ought 
to expect. As a race develops, as it becomes wiser, as its 
social experience gives it higher and better moral ideas, you 
find religion improving. There is a nobler thought of God ; 
he is looked upon as a better and wiser being. There is a 
nobler conception of man ; and the attempts on the part of 
man to come into right relation with God are wiser and bet- 
ter and more humane. People no longer think that they can 
please God by butchering an animal, or by butchering one of 



i6 



Signs of the Times 



their fellow-men, or by burning one of their children in a fur- 
nace, or by casting a baby into a sacred river. These bar- 
baric and cruel ideas belong to barbaric and cruel times; and 
they are left behind as the world grows wiser. 

Now I wish to outline for you, for the sake of clearness 
and consistency in the treatment of my theme, the scheme of 
thought that the Christian world has substantially held for 
centuries. Then I want to explain to you how inevitable it 
has been that that scheme should be outgrown and left be- 
hind. It is only a few hundred years, two or three hundred, 
— we need not go back of the time when the city of Boston 
was founded to come to a period when the theory of the uni- 
verse generally held throughout Christendom was substan- 
tially that theory which is figuratively and poetically set forth 
in Milton's "Paradise Lost." 

Suppose I draw here, in the air, a circle. Let that repre- 
sent the boundary of everything. Let me cut that across the 
centre by a line that may look like an equator. In the upper 
half of the circle is heaven, the home of God and the angels 
and all the celestial hosts. Below, in the lower half, before 
the world was created, was chaos. But something happened 
in this heaven. There was rebellion there. We do not know 
why, except that Milton guesses that, on the day when the 
Christ, the Son of God, was selected to be placed as ruler 
under God, a sort of vicegerent over all his creation, Satan 
rebelled because of pride against that, and led one-third part 
of the angels into this revolt. He was cast out, and so hell 
came into being. It was in the lower part of this great circle. 
If you should draw a line like an antarctic circle near the 
bottom of this hemisphere, hell would be below that. This 
was made the home of these rebel angels. Then God deter- 
mined to create man to repair the loss in heaven ; and Jesus 
was made the minister of God in this work of creation. If 



Break-up of the Old Orthodoxy 



17 



now you draw a small circle, the upper edge of which shall 
almost touch the equator, and the lower edge of which shall 
extend half way down to the dome of hell, you will have 
what we are accustomed to speak of as this solar system, 
the universe. At the centre of this is the earth, a little 
fixed spot, though the largest body of the whole, and round 
it nine concentric, transparent, crystal spheres. To these 
spheres were attached the moon, the sun, the planets, and to 
the outer one the fixed stars. These revolved, carrying 
round the sun, moon, and planets as they moved. The one 
object of creating this world was to make it the scene of the 
probation of man who should be placed on it. But he had 
not been here long before he also was seduced into revolt j 
and he became the object of the curse and wrath of God 
instead of his love. Then God determined to redeem this 
lost race ; and he sent his son in the likeness of a man to 
live and teach and suffer and die here on this little earth. 
Then we have the miraculous Bible, a revelation, teaching 
man this love of God, the history of his fall, and giving 
an account of the work and sufferings of his son, authenti- 
cated by miracle. So you will see that the whole plan, the 
whole scheme of doctrine, fitted this little world, this con- 
ception of the universe which was called into being for it ; 
and there is not one single doctrine of all the old Ortho- 
doxy that has not come into being merely for the sake of 
helping to deliver man from the results of this supposed 
catastrophe brought about by his fall. This is the kind of 
world that was believed in for hundreds of years. You will 
notice that every religion that has ever existed from the be- 
ginning has been fitted in this way into the kind of world in 
which men believed. 

Now, the whole orthodox scheme of salvation, with its out- 
come of heaven for those who accept the redemption offered 



iS 



Signs of the Times 



and of hell for those who reject it, and its eternal dura- 
tion, — all these belong to this theory of things. They are 
all part of it. They have all come into existence because 
men believed in a great catastrophe called the " Fall " ; and 
this theory of things grew up as the method by which men 
were to be delivered from its effects. Why cannot we be- 
lieve it ? I wish to tell you of three things that have hap- 
pened as a reason why we cannot. 

I. Remembering that this was a childhood world, in which 
childhood ideas were accepted, the first thing that we need 
to note is that there has sprung up in the modern world a 
science of criticism, which makes it impossible any longer 
for men to believe that which they used to accept as per- 
fectly credible. The story of " Robert Elsmere " is instruc- 
tive in this direction. The book turns on this question of 
historic criticism. The author makes Robert undertake the 
work of writing a history of France ; and, as he studies the 
authorities to see why men believed thus and thus in the 
Middle Ages, he is forced to apply the same kind of princi- 
ples that he applied to the history of France to the history 
of early Christianity. He found that there was no reason 
for believing in the miracles of eighteen hundred years ago 
that was not equally cogent in favor of the miracles reported 
during the Middle Ages, that the whole thing turned on the 
same kind of human testimony. He found himself in a 
world in which it was perfectly natural and easy for people 
to believe things which in a grown-up world were no longer 
credible. If you go down the centuries, — for it is down as 
we go towards the beginning, — if you go back down the 
centuries, you will find that people were ignorant of the laws 
governing this universe, that they lived in an imaginary, 
magical world. They had no intellectual difficulties con- 
cerning the possibility of this or that happening, any more 



Break-up of the Old Orthodoxy 



19 



than a child has when it sits delightedly listening to a fairy 
tale. The child has developed no philosophical, critical, 
logical difficulties with which its imagination is disturbed; 
but the moment that man learns what is the kind of universe 
in which he is living, what are the forces and laws in accord- 
ance with which the world is governed, then he suddenly 
discovers that he can no longer believe those things which 
he once easily believed. These principles have been applied 
to the Bible; and we have found out that bibles grow as 
naturally as grass and flowers, that all the religions of the 
world have had their bibles that they look upon as miracu- 
lous. We have found out that they have been authenticated 
by miracles, that each has its own cycle of myth and miracle, 
and that there is no adequate reason why we should set our 
Christian history and Christian miracles up by themselves, 
and say that we have reason for faith that the others have 
not; but, in the early childhood of the world, it was per- 
fectly natural that people should believe certain things that 
a grown-up world cannot accept. So we found that the 
creeds of the Church, instead of having a miraculous and in- 
fallible origin, have sprung up, just as the Westminster Cate- 
chism, the Presbyterian Confession of Faith, the Andover 
Creed, and all the creeds of the world have sprung up. 
Men have simply been feeling after the truth, as best they 
could, in the midst of controversies and struggles ; and their 
belief became the orthodoxy of the time. That is the way 
every creed has grown. The application of the critical prin- 
ciples to the ease with which they accepted these things, to 
the growth of the Bible, to the miracle, to the creed, — these 
things have made it impossible for us any longer to accept 
the old theory of the universe, the old scheme of super- 
natural salvation. 

II. Then something has happened in the scientific world. 



20 



Signs of the Times 



I wish I had time to outline it adequately. I must only 
point out a few things here and there. I should class it 
under three different heads : — 

1. This old theory of things told us that the world was 
created only a little while ago ; but geology, within the mem- 
ory of living men, — think how modern that is! — has dis- 
covered that this world is millions and millions of years old, 
proved it beyond a question. For example, we know that 
chalk is made up of the remains of little creatures that were 
once alive. We know that it is being deposited to-day, as it 
was a million years ago, on the sea bottom. We know that it 
must have taken at least a hundred thousand years to de- 
posit the chalk cliffs of Dover, England. This only as a hint 
in one department as to the results of geological demonstra- 
tion. The world, then, instead of being a few thousand 
years old is millions of years old. 

2. Then there has sprung up the science of archaeology, of 
antiquities. \Ye have been studying the remains of human 
life on this planet ; and what do we find ? That man, instead 
of having been created perfect six thousand years ago, has 
inhabited this planet two hundred, perhaps three hundred, 
thousand years. Two hundred thousand is probably the 
lowest limit that competent men would assign to the life 
of man on this planet; and some have adduced very good 
reasons for thinking that he must have been here at least 
three hundred thousand. 

3. Then comes another department, called " Biology," the 
science of life, that which deals with the origin and nature 
of man. It has been demonstrated beyond question that, 
instead of man's having been created perfect, he has been 
developed from the lower forms of life through the lapse of 
thousands and thousands of years ; that there has never 
been any perfect Adam ; that there has never been any 



Break-up of the Old Orthodoxy 



21 



Garden of Eden ; that there has never been any serpent, any 
temptation of the race as such • that there has never been 
any fall. The very basis of the beliefs of Christendom has 
been shattered by this science; and, instead of this little, 
tiny universe, in which this mysterious and wonderful drama 
of creation and probation has been going on, this heaven 
and hell in which it has been played, we find ourselves lost 
in an infinite universe, of which we can imagine no begin- 
ning, boundary, or end. 

III. There has been a development of the humane quality 
in man, — that which we call humanitarianism. Man has 
grown as a moral being, so that it is morally impossible for 
the human race, the highest and most highly developed 
parts of it, any longer to accept as true that which it once 
used to accept without a question. Dr. Channing used to 
argue out the essential goodness of human nature, and say 
that it was incredible that man should be totally depraved. 
But it is not so much on that point that I should lay the 
stress of moral argument. It is that, in the process of civil- 
ization, man has grown so tender-hearted, so loving, so sym- 
pathetic, has developed such a keen sense of that which is 
just and fair, that it is impossible for him any longer to 
believe in the kind of God that men used to worship without 
a question. You will not be surprised at this, if you are 
familiar with human history. Just think of it ! Go back to 
only a few years before the Revolution in France, and what 
do you find? You find a king on the throne, jolly, good- 
natured, selfish, thinking that the whole kingdom was made 
for himself, so that, when they spoke of the State, he says, 
"/ am the State"; who gives to one of his followers — a 
favorite, perhaps — carte blanche authority to arrest anybody 
that he does not like, and cast him into the Bastile, and he 
lies there, going in a young man perhaps, and starves and 



22 



Signs of the Times 



rots year after year until he is gray and haggard and per- 
haps insane. This does not trouble the king in his pleas- 
ures. He does not lie awake nights thinking of the suffering 
he has caused. This kind of cruelty, this kind of barbarism, 
this lack of sensitive sympathy concerning the suffering of 
others, used to be practically universal ; and the king was 
looked upon as having a perfect right to do with his subjects 
anything that he pleased. It was out of such a condition 
of things, out of such social barbarism, that sprang up the 
popular conception of God as a supreme, selfish egotist and 
despot of the universe, who could sit on his throne and 
arrange everything for his own glory, appointing this one 
to heaven simply to illustrate the beauty of his grace and 
to sing his praise forever, and that one to hell simply to 
illustrate the severity of his own justice and his power to 
punish with infinite cruelty. It was natural that out of that 
social, barbaric, cruel condition should spring such a con- 
ception of God as that. It was natural enough then that 
men should believe it ; but to-day men cannot believe it. 
Were there no criticism to tell us that the Bible is not in- 
fallible, to tell us of the natural origin of all religions ; were 
there no criticism to tell us of the natural origin of creeds ; 
were there no science to tell us that the old conception of 
the universe was as a baby's playhouse compared to the 
infinite majesty of what we now know to be true, to tell us 
that man has been on this planet hundreds of thousands 
of years; had it not been demonstrated that man has been 
developed from lower forms of life, — were these things all 
unknown, the growing civilization of the world, the goodness 
of the human heart, would have made it impossible for the 
world any longer to believe in the cruel egotist sitting on 
the throne of the universe, and governing all merely for his 
own glory. The world is too good for that kind of a God 
any longer. 



Break-up of the Old Orthodoxy 



23 



So you find that the churches of every name, though they 
claim to hold the creeds, do put on one side more and 
more those things that the reverence and tenderness and 
sympathy and love and goodness of the human heart will 
no longer bear. And so we hear men like Whittier saying, 

" But still, my human hands are weak 
To hold your iron creeds." 

The revolt of the heart demands at last that the infinite God 
of the universe should be as good as a good man. These are 
the reasons why there is a break-up of the old Orthodoxy, 
why men do not any longer believe in and accept it. 

And what is the significance of these reasons ? Does it 
mean that the world is less religious, less moral, less 
reverent ? Does it mean degeneracy, decay ? It means 
that this human race of ours, starting as a child, is on the 
road towards manhood ; that it is growing, that it has grown, 
too intelligent, too tender-hearted, too good, any longer to 
bear the intellectual contradictions and puerilities and crude- 
nesses and cruelties of the old theories of religion. We shall 
find, I believe, that the world has not outgrown religion, not 
even outgrown the Church or the church idea, but that all 
we love, all we care for, not only remains, but is to go on, 
becoming ever more and more. 



THE ROMAN CHURCH. 



In the summer of 1883, I stood in the well-known church 
of St. Paul's without, at Rome, — so called because it stands 
outside of what used to be the walls of the Eternal City. 
This church is one of magnificent wealth and beauty. It has 
many pillars made of very rare and valuable stones, the gifts 
of cities, states, nations, and kings. But the one thing that 
attracted my attention more than all the rest was a long row 
of portraits above the painted glory of the windows, portraits 
of the popes of the Roman Church. The series began with 
that of Peter ; and it came down through all the ages from 
that time until the present, leaving vacant circular spaces 
to contain those who should occupy the papal chair in the 
coming centuries. 

This, you will note, is typical of the claim which the 
Roman Church has always made. It stands as representa- 
tive of the one true Church of God from the beginning until 
now. Its claim is that it has been presided over by an un- 
broken series of popes, reaching back to him into whose liv- 
ing hands the Son of God himself gave the keys of universal 
dominion both on earth and in heaven. A magnificent 
claim ; and magnificently, we must confess, has the Church 
endeavored to substantiate and carry out that claim. 

But is the claim true ? It is a serious question on the part 
of scholars whether Peter ever saw the city of Rome. We 
know, beyond any question, that the old first church of 



The Roman Church 



25 



Jerusalem was a Unitarian church ; for any thought of a 
trinity had not yet dawned upon the Church's horizon. We 
know that there was no organization then in existence like 
the Church at Rome. We know that its doctrines, most of 
them, were not in existence. We know that there was no 
bishop of that first church. We know that Peter, during his 
lifetime, was never recognized as having any sort of primacy 
among the apostles. If he was ever in Rome at all, — and 
this is a point worthy of your serious attention, — he was 
there as the organizer of a faction in opposition to Paul, who 
occupied the field before him. We know that Paul was 
there ; that he organized in Rome one of the most important 
of all the ancient churches, — that church to which he ad- 
dressed the most important of all his epistles. We know 
that Paul represented a new departure in the church j that 
he was opposed by the older apostles, by all those who be- 
lieved that they had received the final word from the Master. 
Paul claimed to have received a later revelation. At any 
rate, he preached a broader, more humanitarian gospel ; and 
if, as I said, Peter was ever in Rome, he was there at the 
head of a faction which opposed and attempted to discredit 
the work of that apostle who had preceded him, and not as 
the first organizer of Christianity in the Eternal City. 

Perhaps it is worth my while at this point to raise a ques- 
tion concerning this passage of Scripture that the Roman 
Church has always made the basis of its claim and as estab- 
lishing the primacy of Peter. 

It seems incredible that if, in the presence of the other 
apostles, Peter had had any such power conferred upon him 
by him whom they all reverenced as Master, whatever their 
theory of his nature and origin, under those circumstances 
this primacy should not have been acknowledged at the time. 
But we know, as a matter of historic truth, that it was an 



26 



Signs of tlie Times 



afterthought ; and I believe that it can be established as the 
result of sound criticism that these verses themselves were 
an afterthought, — not part of the original gospel, but inter- 
polated, invented, for a special purpose in after years. For 
we have an example of such a thing, which shows clearly 
the spirit of the age, and what the men who were reaching 
out for power and supremacy in the ancient church were 
capable of. There was a whole series of what claimed to be 
the decisions and decrees on the part of the Church of Rome, 
settling controversies that had arisen in different parts of 
the empire ; and it is now settled beyond any sort of ques- 
tion that almost every one of these decretals, as they are 
called, were forged, — forged for the purpose of establishing 
the primacy of Rome, forged that they might be appealed to 
in testimony of the fact, which then began to be claimed, 
that Rome had always been acknowledged as the head of the 
Christian Church. 

As a matter of fact, then, we know that during the first 
two or three centuries, before Christianity attained its 
supremacy in the Roman Empire, it was bitterly persecuted ; 
and during those ages of persecution the Church had no 
desire, even if it had had the power, to make itself a grand 
organization. Its policy was rather to hide itself out of sight 
until the storm of persecution should blow over. And- it 
was only after the persecuting age had passed by, after the 
conversion of Constantine, after the Church had climbed to 
the throne, that it approached anything like the organiza- 
tion which it represents to-day. There were only scattered 
churches in Corinth, in Ephesus, in Rome, in the different 
great cities of the empire, with here and there handfuls of 
believers in the smaller places, the belief growing gradually, 
but growing all the time, — growing as the grasses and the 
flowers grow in spring, out of sight, until the sun of pros- 



The Roman Church 



27 



perity had risen in the sky, and they could show themselves 
without danger of being frost-bitten and killed. 

Then the Church organized itself. Then there were bish- 
ops, claiming individual power to rule over these separate 
churches. And. very naturally the bishop of Rome and the 
church at Rome would arrogate to themselves the suprem- 
acy, superiority over those bishops that were at the head of 
smaller organizations or in less important cities. The bishop 
and the church which were at the capital of the empire would 
naturally be looked up to as occupying at least a more signifi- 
cant position than the bishop of any other Christian organ- 
ization. 

But the time came when the seat of empire was changed. 
Constantine moved his capital to what for the time was 
called New Rome, — Constantinople. Then the bishop of 
Rome, who had already begun to claim the supremacy over 
all other churches, who had begun to claim the power to 
settle disputes both as to doctrine and as to organization, 
ritual, practice, — disputes that might rise between churches, 
between bishops, — began to press more strongly the primacy 
of Peter. Not that the claim did not exist before ; but he 
emphasized it, because there was danger that the metropolis, 
the new capital on the Bosphorus, would supersede his power. 
But the claim had been allowed for so long on the part of 
the neighboring churches that it was not easy to dislodge the 
power that had been established on the banks of the Tiber ; 
and the neighboring bishops naturally appealed in their dis- 
putes to him who was recognized as the most important one, 
at least in all that region. 

At last the time came — I pass over the steps in detail, 
because it is not necessary that I should go into particulars 
now, as well as because I have not time — when the Roman 
emperor sided with the Roman bishop, giving him the advan- 



28 



Signs of the Times 



tage which was so decisive at that time, of the temporal 
power, the emperor back of the bishop. Of course, after 
that there was no power that could dispute the claim of the 
papal see. 

This power, then, grew as the ages went by, until universal 
Christendom submitted. No, not quite. The pope of Rome 
has always claimed, at least in modern centuries, to represent 
. alone the Church of God ; but the whole Greek branch of 
the Church split off from the Roman, refusing to recognize 
its claim. It charged the Roman see with heresy, and re- 
fused to recognize its power, so that there has never been a 
day from the first when the claim of the Roman Church to 
be universal, catholic in the broadest sense of the word, has 
ever been true. But it did assert its supremacy over nearly 
all Europe, over nearly all that had constituted the great Ro- 
man Empire. 

Now I wish, not at all in a spirit of opposition, but as 
sympathetically as I can, to note some features of the Roman 
Church during its grandest days. 

The Roman Church in the main rightly ruled Christendom, 
because it summed up and represented in itself at that time 
all the best there was in Christendom. In those ages, the 
Church perfectly satisfied the intellect of man. There was 
no battle then between philosophy and the Church, or be- 
tween science and the Church, between the thoughts of men 
and the claims of the papacy. Nearly all the intellect in 
Europe was in the service of the Church. Science wrought 
within the limits of her claims. Philosophy speculated only 
within the limits of her claims. Art lived apparently only to 
serve the Church. Music only attempted to give expression 
to the aspirations of the Church. So that the whole intellect 
of the time was satisfied with the Church's theories, the 
Church's conception of the world, the Church's thought 



The Roman Church 



29 



about God, the Church's thought about the nature and origin 
of man, the Church's thought about destiny, about all the 
great things that concern human life. The Church's thought 
at that time was substantially man's thought, so that it existed 
by virtue of the grandest of all rights, the right of summing 
up, expressing, and satisfying the thought of the world. 

Not only did the Church satisfy the thought : it was the 
natural, legitimate, fitting expression of the religious aspira- 
tions of man. There was no emotion, no hope, no fear, no 
worship, no prayer, that the human heart seemed capable of 
that did not find fitting and complete utterance for itself 
through the channels of the Church. It not only satisfied 
man intellectually, it satisfied him religiously. 

One other thing. Whatever may be true of the Church 
to-day, we must remember that in those ages, for some hun- 
dreds of years, the Church stood for humanity. It was the 
grandest humanitarian organization on the face of the earth. 
It stood for democracy. It stood for the essentially human 
as against race, as against feudal power, as against kings and 
emperors. 

Consider for a moment the magnificent power of the 
Church during these centuries and the magnificent way in 
which she wielded it. Think how it stood for man. It was 
an organization spread all over Europe, — not Roman, not 
French, not Spanish, not German, not English, simply human. 
In her churches, kings and beggars knelt on one footing in 
the presence of the one Supreme Being whose greatness 
dwarfed and blotted out all our petty human distinctions. 
Consider the educative power of the fact that at that time 
the papal see itself was freely open, as our presidency is to- 
day, to the lowest-born peasant in all Europe. It was not 
an uncommon thing for a peasant to become pope. Brains, 
character, the natural power of leadership, — these in the 



30 



Signs of the Times 



Church during those ages came to the front, so that, when a 
man reached the papal chair, whether he was good according 
to our standard or bad, wise or ignorant, you might be sure 
that he was there by virtue of natural powers of leadership, 
not because of birth or any distinction of nationality or of 
any other type or kind of power. 

The Church, then, during these ages was the great repre- 
sentative of man. It claimed and it exerted also supreme 
power over all kingdoms ; and, in the main, it exerted it wisely. 
In the main, it exerted that power for the benefit of humanity. 
It beat down the tyrant, the oppressor, him who was so mighty 
that there was no other power in Europe that could match 
him. It stood up for the weak and the oppressed. It was 
the champion, the ally of man against kings, against lords, 
against despotisms of every kind. The Church, then, in 
these three great regards — intellectually, religiously, and so 
far as the humanities were concerned — represented the best 
there was in Europe. 

Let us now note one or two things that can be said about 
it in some other respects. The doctrines, the creeds, of the 
Catholic Church, were substantially those which came to be 
the creeds of Protestant Orthodoxy. And I am free to say 
that, in many of those points wherein the papal doctrine 
to-day differs from the orthodox Protestant, I am compelled 
to sympathize with the Church of Rome. Let me give you 
one or two illustrations for example. 

The doctrine of the Roman Church concerning inspira- 
tion, concerning the Bible, seems to me much more rational 
than that of Protestant Orthodoxy. The Church claims 
that it is not the Book primarily that is inspired. It is the 
Church — the living body of God on earth — that is in- 
spired by the presence of the Spirit of God, which is its 
breath. It claims that the Bible is only one utterance of the 



The Roman Church 



3i 



Church, of no more authority than any utterance which it 
may give of its beliefs or aspirations to-day. 

Then take the doctrine of the Catholics concerning mira- 
cles. The Protestant claim is that there was a little time 
during the first century when miracles were performed ; but 
all that we have to-day by which we can authenticate them 
or attempt to do so is a record that says that certain people 
saw such and such wondrous things performed eighteen hun- 
dred years ago. Who they were that performed them, who 
saw them, or who it was that made the record concerning 
them, of these things we are mainly ignorant. What does 
the Church claim ? The Roman Church claims that this 
living body of God on earth, inspired by the eternally pres- 
ent spirit, is capable to-day, when there is occasion for it, 
of exercising miraculous powers precisely as it did in the 
earlier centuries ; and this seems to me of the two much 
more the rational claim. These only as illustrations. 

One other point I wish to mention, and that is the mag- 
nificent organization of the Roman Church. Never in the 
history of this world has there been anything to match it. 
The only thing that in any way can be spoken of as a par- 
allel is the wondrous organization of the Roman Empire ; 
but that was secular, political. Never has a church been so 
wondrously, wisely organized for power, for dominion, as 
is the Roman Church. Consider, for a moment, how strong 
that is where all Protestant organizations are weak. It had 
a place within its limits and a work for every man, every 
woman, every child, who cared to consecrate himself to it. 
The woman of fashion, weary of the world, widowed, per- 
haps left dependent in mid-life, had her refuge, her work, 
and her consolation in the Church. The old soldier, weary 
of fighting, weary perhaps of dissipation, having drunk the 
cup of life to the very dregs, was offered an asylum in the 



32 



Signs of the Times 



Church, — a place to reform, to cast off his old life, to live a 
new life of consecration and of hope. So there was not 
a single power, faculty, or aspiration of the human heart 
that the Roman Church at that time did not in a measure, 
at any rate, appeal to and satisfy. 

One thing more I must mention, — one service that we 
have no right to forget. After the Roman Empire was 
broken up, Europe was inundated, swamped, by barbarism ; 
and to the Church we owe it that the wrecks, the fragments, 
all that was left of the ancient learning of the world, was 
preserved in its ark, and carried across the flood, to be 
landed on that new continent that represents the modern 
world. The Church was at that time the preserver of the 
world's learning and its hope of a future. In the monas- 
teries up in the mountains, on Mount Sinai, in deserts in 
Asia, in the forests of Northern Europe, clear to England, 
these pious, devoted, learning-loving monks spent their lives 
in copying and caring for the masterpieces of ancient liter- 
ature, keeping them for the time when Europe should wake 
up from its long sleep and desire to quench its thirst once 
more at these perennial fountains of living waters. And 
just here in this service which the Catholic Church rendered 
to the modern world lay the seeds, at any rate, of its decay. 
For one thing you must note ; for it is so important that the 
whole argument turns upon it. Unfortunately for the Cath- 
olic Church, — and yet it could never have been the Catholic 
Church on any other terms, — it had advanced the claim 
of absolute infallibility. It represented God on earth. Its 
theological utterance was the very voice of God. Its theories 
concerning the world, concerning God, concerning the past 
history of man and his destiny, — these theories it announced, 
not as guesses, not as speculations, not as the result of the 
best study that could be given to the subject, but as the 



The Roman Church 



33 



undoubted and eternal truth of God. And yet what were 
these theories ? The theory of the earth, of the heavens, of 
the creation and nature of man, of God, the purpose in 
creation, the method of redemption, — all these things were 
either inherited legends that had come down from an uncrit- 
ical and ignorant barbaric past or they were the speculations, 
the guesses, of people then living, the philosophic attempts 
to render the best account of things that they could. But, 
whatever their origin, the Roman Church accepted these as 
infallible revelations of God, and committed its claim to 
infallibility to the test of their truth. 

Then what happened? This ancient learning that the 
Church had been preserving began to be studied when the 
old conflicts were a little lulled and the people had time for 
thought. Schools sprang up in the East, in Spain, in Paris, 
at Oxford, where this ancient learning was studied anew. 
People were roused again to the interest which the old 
Greeks had begun to show in science and in philosophical 
speculations. Then Columbus sailed, and the flat world 
became round. The mariner's compass was invented, gun- 
powder came into use as a mode of warfare ; then the print- 
ing-press followed; and the intellectual enthusiasm of the 
world was aroused. The world had begun visibly to grow. 

What was the result ? The inevitable result that the hard 
and fast and infallible theories of the Church were burst 
through on every hand; and the Church began its long 
battle, which it has kept up from that day to this, for intel- 
lectual supremacy. It could not admit a mistake. It could 
not change. Therefore it must fight. It must fight the dis- 
coveries in astronomy. It must fight the new light that had 
come into chemistry. It must fight the new physics, the 
new geology, the new biology, the new political economy, 
the new social ideas of the world. So it is perfectly consist- 



34 



Signs of the Times 



ent and in keeping that almost the last thing Pius IX., 
the first pope declared to be infallible in his own person, 
should die just as he had launched his universal curse 
against all modern learning and modern civilization. But, 
mark you, it is no fault of the Church, except that the 
Church made the mistake of claiming to be infallible. It 
only means that the world has outgrown the Church at 
every point, so that intellectually it no longer satisfies the 
thought of man. New knowledge of this world, of God, of 
man and his origin and nature, new knowledge concerning all 
these points that the Church had declared forever settled, has 
sprung up ; and the Church with its infallible theories simply 
cannot adopt these without suicide. It must protect its claim 
to infallibility or accept the modern world. It is nothing less 
than a duel to the death between the intellect of man and 
the Roman Church. And those who believe in God and in 
truth have very little question as to where shall lie the 
victory. 

On the other hand, the religious nature of man began to 
expand. It desired to express itself through new rituals, 
new creeds, to give utterance to new thoughts about God 
and to these new and higher aspirations. It began to have 
a better thought of God than that which had been embalmed, 
like a mummy, in the old creeds. It began to have a better 
thought about man, about society. So there was this revolt 
in the interest of this determination to be free, to utter and 
express these grander and higher religious aspirations of 
the world. So Luther led off half Germany; so England 
broke away from the Catholic Church ; and so all the high- 
est and finest thinkers of the world, with few exceptions, 
have followed or are following their example. 

Then, once more. I said that one of the grandest things 
about the Church at the time when it held its supremacy 



The Roman Church 



35 



over everything was the fact that it stood for man against 
tyrants and kings. The attitude of the Church has been 
reversed, and reversed with perfect naturalness and of neces- 
sity. The Church had claimed to be infallible, to have a 
right to supremacy; and, when that supremacy was chal- 
lenged, when its right was denied, then it began to reach 
out after power to enforce its supremacy. What must it do, 
then, but ally itself with those powers that it had once defied ? 
It must have kings and lords and nobles at its back, holding 
the temporal sword while it wielded the spiritual. So the 
Church, in a perfectly natural, logical way, instead of being 
the champion of humanity, became its tyrant ; and it has 
played the part of repression, attempting to keep the people 
down, ignorant, submissive to its decrees, for the last several 
hundred years. 

Through this process which has now been going on for 
a long time, what has happened in Europe ? I wish to hint 
at one or two things. And, if there is anybody in Boston 
who is still trembling as to the possible plans, projects, and 
machinations of the Roman Church, I wish he would care- 
fully note a few historic facts. It seems to me utterly incom- 
prehensible how any man who has an intelligent idea of the 
history of the Catholic Church for the last five hundred 
years can stand in any sort of awe or fear in regard to its 
future. Why, it was only a little while ago that Rome held 
Europe in its grasp. Where is it now? All the leading 
thinkers, the leading people of Europe, look upon it with 
half-contemptuous pity as an antiquated and outgrown thing. 

How is it in Italy, its seat and home ? Colonel Ingersoll 
said in an address some years ago, when he was inveighing 
bitterly against the Church, as is his wont, that the Roman 
Church had " reduced Italy to a hand-organ and Spain to 
a guitar," which is substantially true. And, if Italy to-day 



36 



Signs of the Times 



is coming to be something more than a hand-organ, it is 
because of Victor Emanuel and United Italy. It means the 
taking away of the temporal power of the pope and the 
establishment of the capital at Rome ; taking the education 
of the people out of the hands of the clergy and intrusting it 
to the secular power ; the disestablishing of monasteries and 
seizing their revenues and lands and applying them to the 
use of men instead of to the Church. There is no place on 
the face of this earth to-day where Rome is weaker than at 
Rome. And yet people are trembling with fear because, 
apparently, they do not know history. 

How is it in France ? Those who claim to know will tell 
you that France is made up of two things, — popular supersti- 
tion and acquiescence in the rites of the churches, so far as 
observances go, and wide and almost universal irreligion. 

How is it in Spain ? I have been there this summer. 
What is the history of the Church in Spain ? Spain used to 
be the mightiest power on earth, and the Catholic Church 
was at the head of its power. What is it to-day ? Even in 
Spain, which is most Catholic of all Catholic countries, the 
churches are rich, the people are poor. The people are ig- 
norant, superstitious ; and this great Catholic country is so 
weak that Europe, the great civilized nations of the world, 
never even stop to pay it the poor compliment of asking its 
opinion on any live subject. Spain is counted out. It lies 
one side of the great onward march of the world. Why not? 
The Catholics drove out the Moors with their learning. 
They drove out the Jews with their learning and enterprise, 
and for hundreds of years cut off the head of any man who 
dared to give utterance to a new thought. According to its 
own claim, that the best, the most intelligent, the most virt- 
uous people are those who are serving the Church in official 
capacities, for centuries it has carried out its programme of 



The Roman Church 



37 



making them celibates, and letting only the meanest, most 
ignorant, and most superstitious and vicious people have any 
children. What can you expect of a country after a policy 
like that, continued for ages ? Naturally enough, the end is 
the " guitar " and the bull-fight. 

The power of Rome, then, is broken in Europe. 

But what of this country ? Thousands of people are afraid 
that it is going to be re-established here. Why? Has 
Rome converted in America any great leaders, political, re- 
ligious, or intellectual ? Note one thing. What the wise 
people think in one age the common people are going to 
think in the next. What are the wise people thinking in 
America ? The number of Catholics is increasing in Amer- 
ica, it is said. Of course it is, and for two causes, — chiefly 
through immigration ; and, when they reach here, these peo- 
ple have children that they train in the Church. Is it in- 
creasing in any other sense in this country ? When you 
bring a man from Europe who was a Catholic before he left 
Europe and land him in Castle Garden, you do not double 
the number of Catholics in the world. You simply move 
one from one place to another. If I had a pile of pebbles 
on this platform, and should carry them from one side to the 
other, there would be no more pebbles when I got through. 
These are the ways in which the Catholic Church is in- 
creasing. 

Now let me attempt fairly and simply as I may to forecast 
what probably is to be the future of the Church. The 
Roman Church will exist perhaps some centuries yet. I do 
not know. It will exist, and it ought to exist, so long as it 
best satisfies the thought, the religious aspirations, and the 
moral needs of any class in the community. The only way 
that religions are killed is by being outgrown. They never 
are killed by direct attack, by argument, by abuse ; and cer- 



38 



Signs of the Times 



tain persons of this city who are wasting their time and their 
temper in the abuse of the Roman Church would do well 
to learn this fact, — that abuse of this sort only results in 
reaction. It touches the pride, the character, the race prej- 
udice and religious enthusiasm of the people, and welds 
them together. Almost the only fear I have of the Roman 
Catholics in the next few years in this country turns not 
upon what the Roman Church itself is likely to do half as 
much as what other people are likely to do concerning it. 
If you only leave them free, treat them justly and fairly, 
they are subject to all the influences of this modern world. 

I would make only one exception to this general tolerance. 
If it be true that certain priests, Jesuit or otherwise, have 
taken a solemn oath of political allegiance to the pope of 
Rome, while they have come here to become citizens, they 
are guilty of perjury; and, if they engage in any external 
acts of positive disloyalty, then I would treat them, — not on 
account of their religion at all, but on account of their crimi- 
nal attitude towards our great country and its interests, — I 
would treat them exactly as I would any other disloyal per- 
sons, restrain them of their liberty or banish them from the 
land. Otherwise, leave the Roman Church to precisely the 
same freedom that we claim for ourselves. I believe that 
the spirit of our democratic ideas, the growing intelligence 
of the world, the growing liberality of thought concerning 
that which makes up the essential thing in religious life, the 
nobler conception of God, the higher ideal of man, of soci- 
ety, the brighter hopes for the future, — these are destined 
gradually to disintegrate the Church. It will exist, as I said, 
for many years perhaps ; but it is going through a process 
of change. 

Take as significant the attitude of the Catholics in Ireland. 
The pope published a bull interfering with what they re- 



The Roman Church 



39 



garded as their political rights, their attempt to gain Home 
Rule. What did they do ? They were on the eve of revolt. 
They said : " We will take our religion from Rome, but not 
our politics. The pope has gone beyond the limits of his 
rightful -claim." And what did the pope do? The pope, 
perhaps for the first time in history, explained to Catholic 
Ireland that he did not quite mean what they had supposed. 
Did the pope ever do that before ? Did a Catholic people 
like the loyal, warm-hearted, enthusiastic Irish ever dare to 
take that attitude against a pope before ? There may be a 
few similar cases in history. But just now they are signifi- 
cant of a temper that even the pope cannot tamper with 
prudently. 

And how is it here in this country ? I believe that nine- 
tenths of the Catholic parents of America are in their hearts 
as loyal to America and to the public-school system, for in- 
stance, as we are. Now and then, under the influence of a 
few enthusiastic leaders, they attempt to galvanize into life 
the parochial schools ; but, when the test, the strain comes, 
the Catholic parent says, " I take my religion from Rome ; 
but, in the matter of educating my children and how I shall 
vote, that is my own affair." In other words, the power of 
the Church is weakening. It dares not assert its old-time 
claim in its old-time way. Democracy, education, social 
growth, those things that we mean by the world's advance, 
are anti-Romish of necessity ; and the Church is feeling their 
power. When a frost comes in spring and freezes over the 
little lake or pond or river, you do not think that the glacial 
age is coming back again. It was only a cold snap of a 
night. You know the sun is coming north, and that spring 
is in the air. So, let there be a Romish reaction here or 
there, who fears ? God's sun is wheeling into the heavens, 
and its influence is telling on all the earth. 



40 



Signs of the Times 



I know not how I can set forth my conception of the past 
and the probable future of the Catholic Church better than 
by comparing it, so far as the comparison will hold, to the 
history of an iceberg. 

Away up in the north, the place of eternal snows, the 
glacier gradually flows down from the mountain and out over 
the land until a huge fragment of ice hangs over the sea. 
The law of gravity by and by severs its connection with its 
parent glacier, and the iceberg is free. Hard and blue, and 
towering and grand, but threatening, it drifts towards the 
south. There is no change apparently day after day, week 
after week, month after month. The sunshine is on it ; free, 
warm winds are blowing against its sides. Warmer waters 
begin to surround it. If it strikes against a ship, woe be to 
those who are sailing the seas ! But gradually a change 
comes on it. It is honeycombed at last by the almost imper- 
ceptible effects of those influences that are playing about it ; 
and some day, though it look almost as mighty as of old, 
anything, — a pistol-shot, a wind, a change of current, — and 
it totters and disappears, and the sea is open for the com- 
merce and the pleasure of the world. 



LIBERAL ORTHODOXY. 



I hesitate somewhat in electing to preach upon this 
subject, because, as I face it, I see two dangers to which I 
am exposed. In the first place, I must, perforce, do some- 
thing which I am very loath to do, — I must repeat myself. 
I must take up and handle again, though from another point 
of view and with another purpose in mind, certain points of 
doctrine with which you perhaps regard yourselves as already 
sufficiently familiar. My theme, however, will compel me to 
do this, because I cannot define Liberal Orthodoxy and try 
to tell what it is in any other way. 

Then another danger confronts me. I fear lest my pur- 
pose, my motive, in it all may be misconstrued, lest I may 
be looked upon as an accuser of my brethren, lest I may not 
be regarded as speaking from a stand-point of earnest human 
sympathy. 

In spite, however, of these dangers, I see not how I can 
pass by a great theme like this. My purpose in this whole 
course of sermons is to bring you into acquaintance first, and 
so into sympathy, with the great phases of religious thought 
and life that make up the present time. I wish you to 
comprehend this age. I wish you to see what are the 
religious forces at work, and to understand, so far as I am 
able to teach you, which way human progress lies, — what 
you ought to help, what you ought to oppose, that we may 
co-operate with God in helping on the coming of that " far-off 



4 2 



Signs of the Times 



divine event to which the whole creation moves." For, 
though as I grow older I am more and more convinced that 
the influence which any one of us may possess is com- 
paratively small, sometimes even discouragingly small, I am 
also convinced that, since the movement of an age depends 
upon the majority force of the individuals that make up the 
world at any particular time, so it is our bounden duty to 
see as clearly as we can, and cast our influence in the 
direction of hope and growth for man. 

In introducing this theme, I must remind you once more 
of certain things with which you are familiar, though perhaps 
the illustrations which I use will not be repetitions of any 
that I have used before. I want to suggest to you the great 
change of theologic climate, so to speak, which is going on. 

It is within the memory of some now living that the late 
Abner Kneeland was arrested in Boston, prosecuted, and 
imprisoned for his religious and theological opinions. And 
we are glad, for the credit of our Unitarianism, that the 
gentle, wise, strong, the foreseeing man, Channing, was the 
one clergyman in the city who came forward for his defence, 
— not at all because he sympathized with him or believed in 
his views, but because he believed in his right to honestly 
hold and to honestly express his views, whatever they might 
be. But this is the significance of the point that I have in 
mind, — that hundreds of men are holding and expressing 
much more radical and heretical views than those maintained 
by Mr. Kneeland, and nobody thinks of raising a question. 

Something like twenty years ago, a personal friend of 
mine, Rev. Henry Powers, was settled as a Congregationalist 
minister in the State of Connecticut. For the first time, as 
I believe, in history, he departed from the settled, or estab- 
lished, usage, and invited not only the Congregationalist 
churches, but, I think, the Universalist church of the town 



Liberal Orthodoxy 



43 



where he was to be settled to sit in the council and Rev. 
James Freeman Clarke to preach the installation sermon. 
This was a very hopeful sign, though it was not at all a log- 
ical thing to do. But we are not discussing the logic of it at 
present. We are simply noting the changes going on. He 
was so far ahead of his time, however, that measures were 
taken to prosecute him for heresy ; and he would undoubt- 
edly have been so prosecuted and possibly expelled, if he 
had not opportunely been called to Brooklyn, thus escaping 
from the jurisdiction of his prosecutors. Only a little while 
ago, — note the change, — when a Congregationalist minister 
was to be settled in Springfield, the Unitarian and Univer- 
salist ministers were invited to sit in the council, and, so far 
as I know, nothing more has happened than that two or 
three of the stricter churches that were invited declined 
to join in the movement. But nothing like prosecution has 
even been threatened. 

I have here on my desk a book called " The Kernel and 
the Husk." I brought it simply to hold it up to you as one 
of the signs of the times, one of the indications of this great 
change which is going on. It is written by Dr. Abbott, one 
of the scholarly and critical men of the Church of England. 
So highly is his scholarship regarded that he was the one 
who was selected to write the critical article in regard to the 
composition of the Gospels for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 
one of the most learned works in the world. All the differ- 
ent departments are committed to the hands of specialists. 
And what is this book, " The Kernel and the Husk " ? In 
it, the author attempts to strip off the husk, that he may find 
the kernel of truth. And what does he strip off ? He strips 
off the whole story of the creation of the world, the Garden 
of Eden, and the fall of man. He clears away completely 
the doctrine of the Trinity. He makes Jesus a purely 



44 



Signs of the Times 



human being, born like the rest of us, dying like the rest of 
us, the only peculiarity being that he was so completely 
filled with the spirit of God that he is inclined to regard him 
as having been perfect, — the ideal man, — worthy even of 
worship, and to be looked upon as an authority in regard to 
spiritual matters, but only a man. He strips away all the 
miracles. He thinks that they are simply accretions that 
have grown up round the central kernel of truth. And of 
course he is no believer in any doctrine of everlasting 
punishment. He has only a message of grand hope and 
trust for the world. 

Only a little while ago, a very significant volume was pub- 
lished by certain ministers of the Established Church in 
Scotland, in which they took substantially the same ground 
occupied by Dr. Abbott. And I hold in my hand a report 
of part of the proceedings of a great meeting held by the 
ministers of the Established Church of England last Octo- 
ber, in Manchester. Canon Farrar on that occasion spoke 
in the strongest way concerning the Church's old attitude 
on the subject of the nature and the destiny of mankind. 
He published a volume only a few years ago, called "Eter- 
nal Hope," in which he argued against the old doctrine. 
He says here that this for a time brought upon him no end 
of opprobrium ; that he was looked upon in many quarters 
as a heretic, and he says, what many would be glad to 
forget and many go so far as to deny, that it is not long 
since it was authoritatively taught by the whole Church 
that those not within its fold were to look forward to a des- 
tiny of endless material suffering; and he denounces that 
doctrine with all the power of which he is capable, and re- 
joices in the fact that a barbarism like that is being out- 
grown. Canon Farrar is one of the scholars and mouth- 
pieces of the Church of England, being connected with 



Liberal Orthodoxy 



45 



Westminster Abbey and one of its most popular preachers. 
At this same congress, another prominent clergyman spoke 
of this doctrine as a hideous nightmare from which the world 
was at last beginning to awake. 

You are familiar with the fact that the attendants at large 
numbers of our churches to-day, those called " Orthodox," 
will say to you as you meet them : " Our minister is almost 
as liberal as yours. He no longer preaches the old doc- 
trine of foreordination ; he does not preach the old ideas 
about the Trinity; he does not preach everlasting punish- 
ment any more. He is a very liberal man." Now and then, 
they will admit, he brings out some one of the old doctrines 
merely to let the people understand that he knows that it is 
still in the creed, or to satisfy some who are not content with 
the more humanitarian preaching \ but the staple of his 
preaching, they will say, is pure humanitarianism, love to 
God and love to man, — his duty here in this world and this 
hope for all mankind. No matter for the present whether 
the man is logical in so preaching, whether he ought to do it 
occupying the position he does ; I merely note the fact. 

Only a short time ago, in connection with the discussions 
with which you are familiar in the American Board as to the 
preparation for going as a foreign missionary to the heathen, 
one of the best known clergymen in this immediate neigh- 
borhood made the statement that, according to the decision 
of the American Board as to what constituted fitness for the 
work of a missionary to the heathen, there was but one Con- 
gregational church in the city of Boston whose minister was 
so qualified. In other words, this clergyman in a public 
address made the statement that every one of the Congre- 
gational ministers of this city was a liberal orthodox, with the 
exception of one. And I know well, by personal conversa- 
tion with ministers here and there, how this old scheme of 



4 6 



Signs of the Times 



Orthodoxy is suffering a "sea-change" into something 
"strange," whether it be "rich" or not, — into something 
unknown to the fathers and that would not be recognized 
by them. 

Now I wish to define Liberal Orthodoxy, and make it clear 
to you just what it consists in, that we may see the meaning, 
the tendency, the drift, and what perhaps is to be the out- 
come. 

If you study a minister who occupies at the present time a 
Liberal Orthodox position, you will find, as I have already 
hinted, that he is distinguished, so far as the fact of his 
church creed is concerned, more for the things that he does 
not preach than for anything else. The first impression that 
he will make upon you is one of question, possibly surprise, 
that, occupying the place he does, he no longer touches cer- 
tain doctrines which have been recognized as a part of the 
orthodox scheme from the beginning. He lays his whole 
emphasis on trying to make men better; that is, as you 
would say, he is practically a Unitarian. He is preaching 
for this world ; he is trying to build up human society here ; 
he is trying to make men honest, true, kind, helpful towards 
their fellow-men. 

Now, in order that I may clearly define the position of 
men like this, I must encounter the danger of repetition. I 
must take two or three of the great historic doctrines of the 
Church, and let you see what they are, and then tell you the 
position that Liberal Orthodoxy holds concerning them. 

In the first place, let us look at the Bible. What was the 
old orthodox view of the Bible ? You know well enough. 
A hundred years ago, it was looked upon by all orthodox 
churches as an infallible book, a revelation miraculously 
given to the world, just as miraculously as though it had 
been handed down by the hands of God himself out of the 



Liberal Orthodoxy 



47 



clouds, as tradition said that the tables of stone were given to 
Moses. They believed that the words of the Bible were as 
literally written by God as though they had been the work 
of his fingers, as it was said the ten commandments were 
written on tables of stone. Some of the old Puritans, soon 
after the Reformation, went so far as to say and teach that 
every word, letter, and every significant point that played a 
part in the punctuation or emphasis, was inspired. You 
will see that that was a perfectly consistent, logical doctrine. 
The moment that a point like that is surrendered, those who 
give it up are, as they say we Unitarians are, all at sea. But 
it was found that this could not be held. For example, Pro- 
fessor Park used to make a point like this. He referred to 
the passage in John, where it describes the disciples sailing 
over the lake near Capernaum, when Jesus is said to come to 
them, walking on the water, after they had rowed five-and- 
twenty or thirty furlongs. Professor Park used to say that 
they had rowed either twenty-five or thirty furlongs j both 
statements could not be true, and the Holy Ghost knew 
which it was, but he chose to express himself in this indefi- 
nite, human fashion. He used to refer to the inscription 
placed over the head of Jesus. Even the casual reader 
knows that these inscriptions are not alike in the different 
Gospels. Of course there was really but one inscription; it 
was not both, or all three. But, of course, the Holy Ghost 
knew which it was ; and, if there had been a verbal inspira- 
tion, he would have reported it with precise accuracy. 
Points like this compel a modification of the old verbal 
theory. It was then changed into the plenary theory, — 
the theory that the Bible was all God's word, and that 
it taught all necessary truth with no admixture of error 
in any vital matter. This was the plenary theory of inspira- 
tion, and this is the one declared in all the standards pub- 



4 8 



Sig7is of the Times 



lishing the orthodox doctrine still concerning the Bible ; yet 
this theory is given up by all those men who call themselves 
Liberal Orthodox. They admit that the Bible is full of 
errors. They admit that it has mistakes in its history ; that 
it is wrong in its science ; that it is full of myth, legend, 
allegory; that it is full of misconceptions, human ways of 
looking at things. 

I hold in my hand a book called "The Heart of the 
Creeds," by an Episcopal clergyman of this city. His pur- 
pose is to state what are the doctrines of the Church, giving 
the historic creeds in the light of modern knowledge. He 
does not claim to surrender any of them : he simply remoulds 
them in the light of higher and better thought. But it is 
one of the most curious, most naive pieces of work that I 
have ever seen ; for there is not a single one of the doctrines 
that is not so modified as to modify it out of existence and 
leave something utterly unlike it in its place. He here admits, 
what I have just said, that the Bible is full of legend, myth, 
allegory, mistakes in history, in science, in all sorts of direc- 
tions j but he holds that, in spite of this, it somehow and 
somewhere contains all essential truth, — all that it is neces- 
sary for a man to know. But, the moment you take a posi- 
tion like that, who is to decide as to what is the essential 
religious truth that all men need to know ? It comes simply 
to this. The moment that theory of the Bible is maintained 
or attempted to be maintained, this is the result : men go 
through the Bible, and select such things as they like or 
such things as they think ought to be true, and decide in 
their own minds that that is what God really meant to teach. 
Of course, you will see how utterly foundationless, how ut- 
terly illogical, is such a position ; for, the moment you accept 
that, you have as many Bibles as there are readers. 

Let us contrast the doctrine of the old creed and of 



Liberal Orthodoxy 



49 



Liberal Orthodoxy concerning the nature and condition of 
man. You know what the old belief was, — that man was 
created perfect in the beginning and has fallen, and that now 
he is at enmity with God, corrupt through and through, 
incapable of doing right, a rebel against God, deserving his 
eternal wrath, and sure to feel its infliction, unless he escape 
in the one special way. But this book and the most liberal 
preachers to-day teach nothing of the kind. They have 
modified the doctrine of the fall of man until it is only an 
allegory, a legend, a tradition, a bit of poetry. 

I was talking, not a great while ago, with some one who 
said he still believed in the fall, — not in any actual fall of 
the race, such as the Bible tells us about as occurring several 
thousand years ago, but something like this : he believed 
that each one of us, as we come to consciousness, wake up 
to an experience of the fact that we are sinful beings, imper- 
fect, that there is evil in us ; and this is the fall, — a fall 
occurring not to all of the race at once, but occurring in the 
consciousness of each individual as he develops a knowledge 
of right and wrong. But do you not see how utterly mis- 
leading it is for a man to face a general congregation and 
say to them that he believes in the fall of man and to talk 
about the fall of man, when this is what he really has in 
mind ? The plain matter of fact is that he has utterly sur- 
rendered what the creeds mean when they speak of the fall 
of man, and he has put something entirely unlike it in its 
place. 

These liberal orthodox do not believe in any total deprav- 
ity, in any ruin of the race. They believe that we are sinful, 
imperfect beings, — we all know enough about that, — that 
we are not ideals, that we are struggling and are battling 
against the lower nature and climbing up into the higher 
life. This is what they mean by the doctrine of the fall. 



Signs of the Times 



Come to the doctrine of the Trinity, and see what changes 
have passed over that. I need not stop to tell you the old 
ideas. If you care to go into it, you can look at the author- 
itative statements I published in my book on " Religious 
Reconstruction." The definition of the Trinity was that 
there are three distinct and eternal personalities in the one 
God. What, now, is the belief concerning the Trinity ? I 
do not risk contradiction in making the statement that there 
is not a single one of these liberal orthodox preachers who 
believes the doctrine of the Trinity at all. I mean the Trin- 
ity as stated and as it stands in the acknowledged authorita- 
tive creeds of the Church. 

What do they believe in place of it ? They believe in a 
sort of threefoldness in the nature of God, just as they say 
there is a threefoldness in man, — body, soul, and spirit. 
They say that God manifests himself now as what they call 
the Father. Looking at him in another way, he is the Son. 
Looking at him in a third way, he is the Spirit. Jesus, on 
this theory, is only the manifestation of the divine in the 
sphere of our human life. Here is not one shred left of 
historic Orthodoxy. I have no fault whatever to find with 
that kind of a trinity. If that is Trinitarianism, then I am 
a Trinitarian. I not only believe in the threefoldness of the 
nature of God, I believe in the manifoldness of the nature of 
God, and that he manifests himself by a million personalities. 
For what does the word " person " mean ? Originally, it 
meant the mask of an actor. He took on a particular mask 
standing for a special character ; and, while he wore that, 
he represented that person. He might wear a thousand 
masks, and present himself in a thousand personalities. 
God in history, in the stars, in the clouds over our heads, in 
the beauty of the dawn, in the beauty of the sunset, in the 
history of humanity, in human love, passion, struggle, ambi- 



Liberal Orthodoxy 



5i 



tion, — in a million different ways, the divine manifests 
itself. But all this is only playing with words, and to call 
anything like this the doctrine of the Trinity is simply an 
abuse of the dictionary. 

What did they believe in regard to the atonement ? You 
know what it was in the old time. It was a belief that man 
was utterly lost, and that an infinite penalty must be paid. 
God's righteous law must be upheld by infinite suffering. 
Man must be purchased by the blood of an infinite one. 
And so the second person of the Trinity was sent forth to 
be born, to suffer, to be put to death, that those who believed 
in him and accepted this substitution might share in the 
merits of this being and so be saved. 

But now what ? Jesus is only a man, according to many 
liberal orthodox. With others, he is something a little dif- 
ferent, — they hardly know what, — a little more than man, 
a little less than God, — something hanging, like the kaaba, 
that holy stone of the Mohammedans, between heaven and 
earth, but strictly the whole of neither. Some hold an ideal 
like this of Jesus. Others say that he is only a man ; but, 
whatever the theory of his person or his nature, they hold 
that his work was simply the manifestation of the love of 
God to the race and a revelation of the universal and eter- 
nal law of sacrifice. They say he teaches us that always, 
not he, but we, if we wish to become divine, must accept this 
law of sacrifice, sacrificing the lower in us ever to the higher. 
The atonement has come to this. It is utterly unlike the old 
doctrine in almost every respect. 

One more doctrine will I notice^ and that is the doctrine 
of the destiny of man. It was a logical part of the old sys- 
tem that those who did not accept the terms of salvation 
should not be saved, but should suffer forever and ever. 
But this doctrine is now either questioned or is scouted 



52 



Sigus of the Times 



openly as barbaric, as unworthy of God, as subversive of the 
very scheme of divine salvation itself ; and this not by those 
who have left the Church, but by those who still stay in it 
and still claim to represent and give utterance to that which 
is the old original doctrine. 

As a specimen of the kind of transformation going on, I 
must read you one note from this " Heart of the Creeds," 
by this Boston clergyman. It touches on the nature of 
Jesus, but the lesson of it equally applies to any of the doc- 
trines I have named. I wish you to notice these words very 
carefully. " When we say of Jesus ' conceived of the Holy 
Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius 
Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried, and went into the 
place of departed spirits,' — when we say this, we simply 
mean to declare our belief in the facts of his history, what- 
ever they are." Why should not I come back from a jour- 
ney and report that I saw something which was black and 
white, and then add that what I mean by saying that is that 
the color was whatever it should be found to be ? 

This is the kind of transformation through which these 
doctrines are passing ; and I can think of nothing to illus- 
trate it so simply and so perfectly as that brief and familiar 
dialogue between Hamlet and Polonius. The wily courtier 
must see things in the light of him who is his prince and 
superior. He did not dare to contradict or disagree with 
him, and so his eyes must see after the pattern that is cut 
for him : — 

Ham. Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel ? 

Pol. By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed. 

Ham. Methinks it is like a weasel. 

Pol. It is backed like a weasel. 

Ham. Or like a whale ? 

Pol. Very like a whale. 



Liberal Orthodoxy 



S3 



So these doctrines assume in shape apparently that which 
the dominant authority for the time seems to make neces- 
sary. 

Now I am going into no wholesale denunciation of these 
men. I only wish you to understand their attitude and see 
the significance of it, and note it as one of the signs of the 
times. I shall say, and say with all the emphasis of which I 
am capable, that it has no right to this name. It is not 
Orthodoxy. It is no more Orthodoxy than the doctrine 
which I represent upon this platform is Orthodoxy. I bring 
no railing accusation against men occupying this position. 
I do not even say they are dishonest. I only say I should 
be, seeing things as I do, if I occupied such a position. 

But there is one thing that touches the human side of men 
in my position now and then. It is a little irksome once in 
a while to have a man who occupies this position, who is as 
clearly an out and out rationalist as I am, stand on a pedes- 
tal, a little superciliously, and look down on me as a heretic 
and outcast. It is not always altogether agreeable, and par- 
ticularly when a man like this will confess to you, in private, 
all these beliefs, and you know that he does not speak them 
from his pulpit, and, when his people are round, you know 
that he does not even speak them to you. But one can 
afford to smile at these weaknesses, which are common 
enough, and recognize and be glad for all the good there is 
in this general attitude. 

I wish to make one more remark about it. I cannot re- 
gard this as having any logical basis. It certainly has no 
basis in the Bible. It has no basis in history, no basis in 
any scientific theory of the world, no basis in criticism. It 
is in a position of ecclesiastical and spiritual vagabondage, 
" without visible means of support." It is only a transition 
stage towards something else. But, recognizing it as such, — 



54 



Signs of ike Times 



recognizing it as being what it is, — then I am glad to recog- 
nize it, glad to note its significance, glad to read in it the 
promise of a better time. As a matter of fact, there are 
only a few people who are really logical or who care much 
about logic. They drift along, following, as all forces do, 
the line of least resistance, getting on flounderingly, but get- 
ting on; and that, after all, is the principal thing. So I 
recognize this Liberal Orthodoxy as a sign of growth. It 
means that the old religious life is not fixed, not hard, not 
fast, not unchangeable. It is the same kind of prophecy 
that we see in the spring just after the snows have gone 
away and when the sun begins to get warm over our heads. 
Still, the trees all look as though they had been fixed in 
their places hard and fast forever. But some morning you 
note a little flush between you and the far-off blue sky. You 
can see the buds are starting, tiny leaves are opening, and 
you know that the eternal life is mightier than the fixity 
of all forms, and that things, whether they will or not, 
under the impulse of the infinite wisdom, power, and love of 
God, are growing. And so Liberal Orthodoxy is a sign of 
growth. It means dawn. The sun is not in sight yet. The 
tiny rays are creeping up the sky. The hilltops catch the 
light here and there, and the shadows are beginning to stir 
a little uneasily and lift themselves. In this period of dawn- 
twilight, it is no wonder if people do mistake the shape of 
the mist itself for the eternal and changeless Rock that it 
merely clothes for the time. So, many of these beliefs are 
only changing forms of mist. Stirred by the sun's rays, 
they will lift themselves, and show the real beauty and glory 
of the real world of God. 

So this Liberal Orthodoxy is a hopeful sign of the times. 
It does not mean the decay or the passing away of religion. 
It does not mean the decay or the passing away of the 



Liberal Orthodoxy 



55 



Church. It does not mean the loss of the Bible. It does 
not mean the loss of Jesus from his grand place in the relig- 
ious life of the world. It does not mean the loss even of 
religious rites and symbols. It does not mean the loss of 
anything that is vital to the growth of man. It only means 
that the one eternal God-life in the past is in the midst of 
all the growth and change. It means that he reshapes } 
remoulds things age after age ; and, while they are in the 
process of remoulding, — while they are neither the thing 
they were nor the other and better thing that they shall be, 
— they must perforce seem to us illogical, unfinished, out 
of place in the world. But wait. " God's in his heavens," 
God is in his world, God is over all and in all and through 
all. 

One word, however, I would speak, if I could reach the 
ear and the heart of every Liberal Orthodox man in America 
and Great Britain; for they are as numerous there as here. 
It would be to remind them of the voice said to have been 
heard by Moses as a command when he stood with his 
people on the brink of the Red Sea, Pharaoh behind, the 
impassable waters before, the people trembling and afraid, 
not knowing which way to go. If I could, I would utter in 
the ears of all the liberal orthodox people of the world this 
command : " Speak unto the children of Israel that they go 
forward." 



UNITARIANISM. 



In the narrower sense of the word " Unitarian," Unitarian- 
ism is a very ancient belief. If we take it as connoting 
merely the unity of God, then in the line of our own spiritual 
ancestry it is at least as old as the earliest of Hebrew 
prophets. How much of belief in this divine unity there 
may have been underlying the obvious idolatry of many of 
the other religions we may not perhaps be quite certain to- 
day ; but there are traces, — at least in the esoteric thought, 
the thought which the priests kept as their own peculiar heri- 
tage, of many of the old religions, — of this belief that God, 
in spite of the diversity of manifestation, was really one. 

The Jews were Unitarians in this sense. So were and are 
still the Mohammedans. There is no sort of question that 
the old first Church at Jerusalem, the first Christian Church, 
presided over by James the brother of Jesus, was a Unita- 
rian church ; that the churches founded by Paul were Unita- 
rian churches. Nearly all the Christian churches for the 
first three centuries were Unitarian. This does not mean, 
however, that the trinitarian belief was not beginning to 
manifest itself here and there, gathering headway for the 
time when it should be finally declared the orthodox faith of 
Christendom. This, as you are aware, was about the first 
quarter of the fourth century. At that time, however, we 
know that Unitarianism was put down, and that Trinitarianism 
came to the front, largely from the personal influence of the 



Unitarianism 



57 



emperor himself. It is a question to-day as to which would 
have been declared orthodox had it been left to a popular 
vote of all the Christian churches of the time. But, after 
Trinitarianism was declared to be the religion of the empire, 
of course Unitarianism in all its forms was declared a heresy, 
and the whole effort of the Church and of the empire com- 
bined to stamp it out. Yet Unitarianism in some form lived 
from the beginning until to-day. Here and there throughout 
the Middle Ages was some grand mind, some free, brave 
man, who dared to think for himself, and dared to risk his 
life for his thought, and to hold by the life of God's eternal 
truth concerning this matter as fearlessly as concerning all 
others. And in almost all cases this type of men were 
Unitarians, handing on the torch of truth from one to 
another across the dark waste of the Middle Ages. 

Unitarianism sprang into being again as the result of the 
freedom that came with the Reformation. And it has 
existed in an organized form for more than three centuries in 
South-eastern Europe, and has a vigorous and flourishing life 
there to-day. 

That which concerns us this morning, however, is the more 
modern movement of Unitarianism, which means something 
more than a belief in the unity of God as opposed to the 
trinity, and which sprang up simultaneously in England and 
in this country. Of course, we shall devote ourselves only 
to its manifestation here. 

It was inevitable that Unitarianism, this new movement of 
religious life, should manifest itself, just as inevitable as is 
the morning, just as inevitable as is the sprouting of the 
grass and the blossoming of the flowers in spring; for Unita- 
rianism is merely one indication of the fact that humanity is 
growing. It is the result of that growth, it is an oppor- 
tunity for the manifestation of it. It indicates that humanity 



53 



Signs of the Times 



has grown in two particulars especially ; and it is these two 
particulars which I wish to notice. 

Unitarianism indicates, in the first place, a growth of the 
human heart, a higher manifestation of that humanity which 
we call specifically humane, — tenderness, pity, compassion, 
love, sensitiveness to that which is right, to that which is 
just. Unitarianism was, I think, in the beginning, more 
than anything else a moral protest in the interest of this 
higher and tenderer sense of justice and right. The early 
Unitarians declared that the old scheme of doctrine which 
was held to be orthodox in that day was an unjust scheme; 
that it was not righteous on the part of God to do what the 
creeds declared that he had done ; that it was not righteous 
on his part to have created a world as it is said that he cre- 
ated this, to have created man and to have subjected him 
to temptation, to have permitted him to fall and then to 
link with this first representative of the race his descendants, 
all who should ever come to be born, so that they all on 
account of that fall should be under the wrath and curse of 
God. They said that this scheme, including the fall, the 
method of redemption, the destiny of those who were not 
saved, was unrighteous. The heart protested against it. 
They could not and they would not believe it. This was not 
because they had discovered proofs that it could not be true, 
but because the heart of humanity had grown too tender, too 
humane, to believe such things of the Father in heaven any 
longer. It was said, you know, in the first place, that the 
difference between Universalism and Unitarianism was that 
the Universalists believed that God was too good to damn 
men forever, while the Unitarians believed that man was too 
good to be damned forever. I think it is nearer the truth to 
say that the Unitarians held to both these positions. Both of 
them sprang out of this revolt of the human heart against 



Unitarianism 



59 



these teachings concerning God and man. They declared 
that God should be at least as good, as tender, as true, as 
merciful as they were. They demanded that the conception 
of goodness which was held here on earth should be the 
conception which should be applied to God in heaven, or 
else, they said, goodness can have no meaning. If God be 
not good as we are, and as we expect our fellow-men to be 
good, then in no sense that can have any meaning to us is 
he good at all. This was the revolt of the human heart. 

There was an indication of growth not only of the heart, 
but of the intellect, the growth of the mind of man. Men 
came to demand that religion, like everything else, like every 
other department of human thought and life, should be 
treated as reasonable. They declared their belief in the in- 
tegrity of the human mind, in that reason which God has 
given us, asserting their faith in it as the measure of the 
reasonableness of that which was presented for their accept- 
ance. They did not occupy the absurd position of saying 
that they would not and could not believe anything true that 
they could not understand. No one was ever quite so un- 
wise as that. We believe to-day, on the basis of scientific 
demonstration, a thousand things that we cannot under- 
stand; but we know they are true, rationally and scientifi- 
cally demonstrated to be true. 

The early Unitarians had no idea of rejecting all mystery. 
They simply said that they had a right to think, that they 
had a right to subject whatever was brought to them for 
their acceptance to the test of reason, to find out whether it 
were proved to be true, and to reject it if it were not so 
proved. So it was a development of the human heart and 
the growth of human reason out of which Unitarianism was 
born. 

Think, for a moment, how right they were concerning this 



6o 



Signs of the Times 



matter of the supremacy of reason. If a man stand in the 
presence of two roacls, wondering which he shall take, he 
decides whether he will take this one or that one for some 
reason. If there is no reason why he should take one more 
than the other, then the whole matter hinges upon chance, 
impulse, and there is no reason involved in the matter at all. 
If a man accepts a reason for being a Christian, by that very 
act he asserts the supremacy of reason. If there is no reason 
why a man should be one thing any more than another, then 
he may as well be a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Mormon, as to be 
a Christian. The very minute, then, that any man assents 
to the idea that reason is to decide his course, that very 
minute, by implication, whether he will or not, he is a ration- 
alist. Unitarianism, then, was born out of the higher devel- 
opment of the heart and the mind of the world. 

At first, it was traditional and textual. It did not occur to 
the early Unitarians to question the infallibility of the Bible, 
its authority as a divine revelation to the world. Some of 
their early scholars, indeed, did trace here and there human, 
fallible elements in the Old Testament ; but the New Testa- 
ment nearly all of them practically accepted as infallible 
authority. 

It did not occur to them to question miracles, to question 
the utterly unique, miraculous position of Jesus. Many of 
them believed in his divinity while denying what was called 
his deity. Many of them believed in his pre-existence, — 
that is, they were Arians, — but they all believed that he was 
miraculously sent as God's special messenger, guide, and 
Saviour of the world. They occupied a position, then, inside 
the New Testament. It was a battle of texts between them 
and their opponents. This position to-day, I think, we all 
recognize as illogical and untenable. 

For what is the Bible ? The Bible is simply a great relig- 



Unitarianism 



61 



ious literature. If they could find a text that proved the 
unity of God, their opponents could find a text which at 
least appeared to hint the trinity. If they could find a text 
which proved the goodness of the nature of man, their 
opponents could find a text to teach his innate and utter 
depravity. If they could find a text to prove the universal 
fatherhood of God, their opponents could find a text by 
which they could prove that he had been a Father to the 
Tews and Christians in a peculiar sense, in which he was 
not to the rest of mankind. If they could find a text by 
which they could prove the eternal mercy of God, and so 
build a basis for eternal hope, their opponents could find a 
plenty of texts which appear to teach the endless doom of 
the majority of mankind to endless pain. It was then, as I 
have said, a battle of texts, an illogical and utterly unten- 
able position. 

The Bible, as I have said, was simply a religious litera- 
ture, composed by a large number of people during a period 
stretching at least over a thousand years. It represented the 
opinions of a vast number of different men, so that there 
was no consistent teaching to be found in it, as a whole, con- 
cerning God or concerning the nature of man, concerning 
the nature of Jesus or his mission to the world, and the 
destiny of mankind. It was full of conflicting testimony, as 
was natural. This phase of Unitarian life was the first step, 
the utterance of the right of reason. 

But the fathers did not fully see to what lengths that 
assertion would logically carry them. They were not pre- 
pared for the next step. Who ever is ? Will the world ever 
outgrow the tendency to think that it is safe to go only as 
far as it has gone ? that the man who dares to take the 
next step ahead is to be persecuted and put down? It is 
disheartening to read history in the light of this thought. 



62 



Signs of the Times 



The great leaders of the world, the great liberators, hailed 
by a few, persecuted by the many, at last establish their 
grand positions ; and then their very followers treat them 
as though they had taught the last word that God intended 
to speak to the world, and are ready to persecute the next 
man who in the same spirit of this divine leadership declares 
the next word in that unfolding revelation that began when 
life began, and that is never to end so long as there is the 
possibility of the growth of thought. 

These early Unitarians were not ready for the next move- 
ment. It came in with Theodore Parker. I do not think 
Parker was the inventor of it : he was its voice, its manifes- 
tation. It was in the air. No man ever creates an epoch. 
Rather it is the epoch which creates him, which makes him 
its mouthpiece. Theodore Parker was one of the grandest 
souls that ever lived, a man religious in every fibre of his 
being from his earliest boyhood up ; a seer, reverent, truth- 
ful, loving, tender ; a man all alive to the touch of the 
enveloping God; a God-intoxicated man ; a man who saw, 
felt, heard God everywhere. He could not believe that God 
was done speaking to the world. He was as ready to listen 
to his voice this morning as was the old prophet in Judaaa 
two thousand years ago. This was the kind of nature that 
the man possessed, — a nature so tender and sympathetic 
with all men, so full of love to all mankind, that he thrilled 
at the thought of any and every injustice, that he felt him- 
self God-appointed to right every wrong. 

Theodore Parker preached a sermon which marked an 
epoch, on "The Transient and Permanent in Christianity." 
This was in 1841. The result was the withdrawal of 
fellowship from him on the part of every Unitarian minister 
in Boston, with the exception of two. Those two names 
ought to be mentioned reverently and in honor to-day, be- 



Unitarianism 



63 



cause they dared to stand by his side for the right of free- 
dom of religious utterance, — John T. Sargent and James 
Freeman Clarke. This sermon, "The Transient and Per- 
manent in Christianity," might be preached in any Unitarian 
church to-day without raising one single word of comment. 
Indeed, it might be preached in many a so-called Orthodox 
church without raising a ripple, so mild does it seem. But 
it was radical at the time. 

What did Parker ? He freely announced the new step 
which Unitarianism must take by criticising the New Tes- 
tament as well as the Old, criticising any and all Script- 
ure not only, but applying reason to the matter of the 
authenticity, the authorship, and the correctness of texts. 
He announced that, from that time on, truth and truth only 
was to be taken for authority, that there was no authority 
above truth, that truth and truth only was the voice of God. 
Not only then did he apply this freedom of criticism to the 
Old Testament and to the New, but he took another step, 
which then seemed little less than sacrilege. He dared to 
announce his belief that Jesus was purely and simply a man, 
natural in his birth, natural in his death, superior, supreme, 
perhaps, over other men, but only by virtue of his openness 
to the inpouring of the spirit of God. 

He also impugned miracles, not only as touching the 
nature and career of Jesus, but in all directions asserting 
the divineness of the natural order of the world, asserting 
his faith in the ability of God to govern his world by means 
of and through this natural order, leaving no necessity for 
magic or miracle. He recognized the miraculous in the mar- 
vellous order of nature. He abolished by a stroke the dis- 
tinction between the natural and the supernatural, making 
the universe a unity, not denying that which had gone by the 
name of the supernatural, the spiritual, and the divine, but 



6 4 



Signs of the Times 



enlarging the definition of nature until it included all things 
in heaven above and in the earth beneath. 

You see how radical the change was. It was nothing 
more nor less than setting Unitarianism free from the bond- 
age to text, a bondage to the old-time habit, a bondage to 
this illogical attitude, and making it free to face the great 
facts of the universe of God and of man. 

I wish now, as briefly as I can, after this little sketch of 
what Unitarianism has been in the past, to tell you, — mark 
the distinction, — not what Unitarianism is of necessity, but 
what I am convinced it ought to be and must become. I 
shall not attempt to define the attitude of my brethren. I 
define merely my own. 

Unitarianism has reached a point in the history of the 
world's moral and intellectual development when it can and 
ought to plant itself squarely on this one position, the essen- 
tial religiousness of the natural order of the universe. It 
must declare, it has declared, that this universe is not one of 
creation, fall, and recovery, not one of catastrophe, but one 
of natural order and of normal growth. The natural order 
of this world is a divine order. The world is not secular, 
under the wrath of God, to be redeemed and reclaimed. The 
natural order from the beginning till to-day, and as far as we 
can trace it running out into the future, is, as God meant it 
to be, a divine order, appointed, led, lifted, guided, by the 
hand of God himself. 

What, then, does religion become in a universe like this ? 
Not a scheme of salvation, not a plan of redeeming man from 
the result of a catastrophe. It becomes a work of adjust- 
ment, bringing man into right relation, within the limits of 
his own nature, to his fellow-men, and in right relation to God. 
This work is in the individual, where the faculties, powers, 
passions, go to make up the man. It makes the man him- 
self a divine order, to start with. 



Unitarianism 



65 



Again, it is the work of reconciling man to man, of bring- 
ing about the perfect social order of the world. It is 
bringing man to recognize and obey the divine laws that 
underlie human society, and in accordance with which it 
must be lifted up and led on toward perfection. 

It brings about the reconciliation of man to the facts of 
his environment in the physical universe and to the facts of 
his environment in the spiritual universe, man as soul related 
to God just as truly as the body is related to the physical 
universe about him. Religion is the discovery of this divine 
order in the world, and bringing men into accord with this 
order. It means making man broader, developing the indi- 
vidual, society, government. It means the perfection and 
the divine mystery of all that is human, — the perfection of 
life here in this world and of course its further growth and 
progress forever. 

In the first place, in order to attain this knowledge by 
means of which the reconciliation can be effected, it means the 
declaration of utter, absolute intellectual freedom in religion. 
We have heard freedom talked about a good deal in the 
modern world, but we are apt to forget how new a thing it is. 
Do you know, until the liberal churches of the modern world 
were organized, there never was a religious organization on 
the face of the earth that did not treat free thought as a sin ? 
Do you know that ? Do you know how modern this freedom 
is ? Every religion, every pope, every council, every synod, 
every religious organization, from the beginning till modern 
times, has treated the free-thinker as an outcast, an enemy of 
God and man. We want no freedom for the mere sake of 
freedom. We want freedom, because we believe that only 
through the result of free investigation can the truth be 
found ; we want freedom for the sake of the discovery of 
truth; the discovery of truth we want for the sake of the 



66 



Sigtis of the Times 



culture and development of man. Modern Unitarianism, the 
Unitarianism that is to possess the future, must stand for 
utter individual freedom. We believe there is no truth in 
heaven or on earth, no truth in the past, no truth in the 
present, the discovery of which will not redound to the glory 
of God and the honor of man ; so we must be free to search. 

In the next place, this position of intellectual freedom 
puts us in a position which we ought to be proud to occupy, 
a position that no other religious body with which I am ac- 
quainted has, — the position of religious leadership to the 
world's intellectual leadership. There is no reason why we 
should not be in perfect sympathy with all the intellectual 
lights and leaders of the world ; why we should not welcome 
all their light, all their truth, interpreting it on its religious 
side for the uplifting of man. We are fitted, if we are brave 
enough, strong enough, broad-minded enough, to be the re- 
ligious leaders of the world's intellectual leaders, to take our 
place as guides toward the future religious development of 
mankind. 

And yet this need not take away from the ministry to the 
poor, the ignorant, the common people, the masses of men. 
I hold a different opinion, indeed, on this point from that 
which I hear expressed by my brethren. I do not believe 
that Unitarianism is specially or peculiarly fitted to be the 
religion of the masses, — not because there is anything the 
matter with the religion, but because of the lack of taste 
for the simple and the highest on the part of the masses. If 
you study the attitude of the uneducated masses of the world 
in any direction, you will find that it is not towards an ap- 
preciation of the simple, not towards an appreciation of the 
highest. They do not choose the simplest and the finest in 
art, in literature, or in any department. Something that 
appeals to the love of mystery appeals to them more 
strongly. 



Unitarianism 



6 7 



There must be growth on the part cf people to be free 
from fear and to enable them to appreciate the simple as the 
divinest before they can be ready for the leadership of our 
Unitarian faith. But they are coming more and more rap- 
idly to do this, so that we need not despair of ministering to 
all classes and conditions of men. But we can only minister 
to them by as much as we teach them to be free, to be inde- 
pendent, to think for themselves, and to appreciate that 
which is best and highest. 

Occupying this position, on what basis can we organize 
ourselves ? We cannot be organized on the basis of a creed, 
as have been all the religious organizations in the past, 
though not at all because we object to creeds. I have no 
objection to a hundred creeds. I am perfectly willing to 
write one out this morning, or as soon as I have time, of 
any length that any one can desire, giving expression to the 
belief I hold this morning. Only this is the position of Uni- 
tarians : we declare that the world is growing, that to-mor- 
row a man may discover some new truth that no one knows 
to-day, and, if he does, that is a divine truth that belongs in 
our creed, and so the creed must be perpetually revised. 
We do not object to creeds because we have no definite be- 
lief, or because we are not willing to give expression to what 
we do believe, but because we are not willing to give bonds 
to any man that we will not learn anything new. We hold 
ourselves perfectly free to go on to the discovery of new 
truth in every direction. 

What, then, can we organize ourselves upon ? We have a 
sufficient basis for organization, as I claim, — the basis of a 
common purpose to find the truth, to live the truth, in the 
conviction that this only is true religious service. This we 
call devotion to God, loyalty to him, and loyalty to man. 
This is the basis of all the scientific associations of the 



68 



Signs of tlie Times 



world. We can indeed incorporate into our creed as un- 
changeable so much as we have demonstrated to be true 
beyond a question. But, concerning anything beyond that, 
we must hold it open to revision. 

But suppose we organize on the basis of a common pur- 
pose, to be truth-seekers and truth-lovers, to find all we can 
of the laws and the life of God in the universe and incor- 
porate that as fast as we can in the growing life of humanity : 
then I hold that we need no other basis of organization. 
The brotherhood of man, — not, parrot-like, echoing back and 
forth from city to city and State to State, and nation to 
nation and hemisphere to hemisphere, the words without any 
regard to what they meant when they were first formulated, 
but to see that they utter a living conviction to-day, the sym- 
pathy of men all over the world, facing forward, trusting in 
God, trusting in the universe, trusting in the integrity of the 
human intellect, trusting in the growth of human society ; 
facing forward, recognizing as true all which has been dem- 
onstrated to be true, and cheering each other on in the en- 
deavor to discover that which is new and better than the old. 

I have only one brief word of criticism on the average 
attitude of Unitarianism in the past and as it seems to me 
in some directions to-day. 

I think I have noted a too great anxiety on the part of 
Unitarians to minimize the difference between them and the 
attitude of the older churches ; to try to believe that there is 
not much difference ; to try to keep the sympathy of the 
older churches ; to feel out for a hand-clasp from some man 
who, if he is honest, has no business to give us a hand- 
clasp; to seek the patronage of the older faith; to rejoice 
over any token of sympathy in that direction. 

Why, friends, if we are very much like the older churches, 
then it is a crime for us to exist. We have no business to 



Unitarianism 



6 9 



exist unless we are so much unlike them as to make a reason 
for our coming into existence as some new thing. If I be- 
lieved that they were doing the work that God calls for in 
this age, I should not be in a Unitarian pulpit, and I should 
not believe that you had any business in Unitarian pews. 

My final word is the conviction that we ought to assert the 
position to which we are called as one to which we are di- 
vinely sent. I believe that the welfare of the world in the 
future depends on the promulgation and the general accept- 
ance of the idea for which Unitarianism is standing, and is 
coming more and more to stand. There has never been any 
catastrophe in the past calling for the kind of salvation still 
offered by the older churches. They have misread the old 
universe. I believe that we, for the first time in history, are 
comprehending what kind of a universe this is, and what has 
been the origin, the nature, and the method of growth of 
humanity. We stand, then, for a new revelation of God's 
truth, a new gospel to mankind. We have no right to stand 
for anything less than this ; and, if we stand for this, we 
should earnestly, faithfully, in most consecrated fashion, as- 
sert this day by day. We should live for it, give for it, work 
for it, if need be, die for it, as the grandest souls of the 
ages have been willing to die. 

If we stand for anything less than this, then this schism 
which we have created in Christendom is wrong; and we 
ought to go back to the old churches. But, if we do stand 
for new life, light, leadership for mankind, for a new revela- 
tion of God, then, not egotistically, not with self-glorification, 
not for the sake of building up our denomination, but, like 
a prophet burdened with the seriousness of the task imposed 
on him, let us go forth proclaiming this new truth, — not 
ours, but God's, — stand for it, work for it, live for it, day 
by day. 



7o 



Sig7is of the Times 



I do not believe — and in the light of what I am saying 
you will not think me illiberal — in working for the support 
of a system which you are convinced is wrong. That is not 
the one to help. I do not believe that you have a right to 
contribute your money to the support of schemes of thought 
and life which you are convinced are not fitted to help the 
world. You have little enough strength, little enough time, 
little enough money, little enough service, to offer for what 
you believe to be God's truth, that on which depends the 
welfare of the world. It is not working for yourselves, for 
your own little body : it is working for the glory of God, it 
is working for the deliverance of the world. 



FREE RELIGION AND ETHICAL CULTURE. 



In the year 1865, the National Conference of Unitarian 
Churches was organized in the city of New York. Because 
it was the occasion of the formation of the Free Religious 
Association, I wish to read to you two or three words from 
the constitution which the National Conference adopted. 
You find in it the phrase, which is the only important thing, 
" the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ " and " the building 
up of the kingdom of his [that is, God's] Son" ; that is, the 
Unitarian Conference, speaking for all the Unitarians in the 
country, put themselves in the position of being disciples of 
the Lord Jesus Christ, and announced as the great work 
before them "the building up of the kingdom of God's Son." 
The Free Religious men, those who came to represent the 
Free Religious Association, objected to this language for 
two reasons. The objection at first sight may seem to you 
slight and trivial, and you may question whether there was 
sufficient reason for the Free Religious Association's coming 
into existence ; but, whether we agree with the earnest men 
who were foremost in that movement or not, we must recog- 
nize the fact that they were earnest, that they were devoted, 
that they were high-minded, and that they meant to be what 
they charged us Unitarians with not being, logically consist- 
ent. They said this declaring ourselves subject to the lord- 
ship of Jesus is a limitation of perfect intellectual liberty. 
They did not object to any one's coming to accept this lord- 



Signs of the Times 



ship as the result of the intellectual liberty, but they did 
object to being bound to that from the outset ; for they said, 
— and they said it, mark you, in the spirit of Jesus himself, — 
We will call no man, not even Jesus, "Master " in this sense : 
we will be utterly free. You see, and this is the point I 
have in mind, that they were only logically carrying out the 
principle of perfect intellectual liberty. 

They objected to it, however, on another ground. They 
said the attitude of the ordinary Unitarian towards Jesus is 
simply a traditional attitude, and is inconsistent with the 
declaration that he is only a man, and savors at any rate of 
idolatry. It is making a man the object of a reverence that 
at least borders on divine worship, putting him between the 
soul and the one Father, God of all. You will note that I 
am not now uttering my own sentiments. Whether I agree 
with them or not is entirely one side of my purpose. I am 
attempting, as clearly and simply as I may, to outline the 
position which the Free Religious Association then assumed ; 
for this Association was the result of the insistence on the 
part of Unitarians on the use of these phrases, which they 
regarded as a limitation of human thought. 

When they organized themselves, they declared their pur- 
pose in the following words : — 

"The object of this association is to encourage the scien- 
tific study of religion and of ethics, to advocate freedom in 
religion, to increase fellowship in spirit, and to emphasize 
the supremacy of practical morality in all the relations of 
life. All persons sympathizing with these aims are cordially 
invited to membership." 

The Free Religious Association, then, was organized as a 
protest against what these men regarded as a halt on the 
part of Unitarians. They said the Unitarians are not con- 
sistent with their principles. They have not carried them to 



Free Religion and Ethical Culture 



73 



their logical outcome. These men, I believe, were actuated 
by the noblest religious enthusiasm, by the noblest love of 
their fellow-men, and by the noblest loyalty to truth. 

A protest, if it succeeds, dies even in the hour of its 
victory ; for in the very act of death there is resurrection to 
eternal life of the principles for which it stands, and that 
come to be so universally recognized that there is no longer 
place or use for the organization itself. It seems to me that 
this expresses in very brief words substantially the outcome 
of this Free Religious movement. It has been limited in its 
range. It has organized only a few societies ; and to-day 
those few, I think it is safe to say, are either dead or dying, 
and the work of the Free Religious Association is practically 
at an end. 

As a recognition on the part of Unitarians of the success 
of this protest, I wish to read just a few words from the 
clause added to the original constitution of the National 
Conference : — 

" While we believe that the preamble and articles of our 
constitution fairly represent the opinions of the majority of 
our churches, yet we wish distinctly to put on record our 
declaration that they are no authoritative test of Unitarian- 
ism, and are not intended to exclude from our fellowship any 
who, while differing from us in belief, are in general sym- 
pathy with our purposes and practical aims." 

I read these last words to show you that practically the 
great principles for which the Free Religious Association 
organized itself have been recognized, and the National 
Conference itself has declared that it means to put no limit 
to intellectual liberty, and that it does not intend to exclude 
from its fellowship any man who is in general sympathy with 
its purpose and practical aims, whatever his special personal 
attitude may be towards any claims of lordship or any dec- 
laration that calls Jesus the only Son of God. 



74 



Signs of the Times 



This Association, if it did nothing more, has left a heri- 
tage to free thought of certain very notable names, a galaxy 
of stars in our intellectual firmament that it is worth our 
while, in passing, to glance at for a moment and name. For 
years its president was O. B. Frothingham ; and among those 
associated in the work and who frequently stood on its plat- 
form were men like Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Weiss, 
David A. Wasson, F. E. Abbot, T. W. Higginson, women 
like Lucretia Mott and Ednah D. Cheney, with a host of 
others hardly less well known. Persons such as these we 
are proud to honor, and proud that we have grown enough 
so that we can work in full fellowship with them to-day, 
however much they might have differed from us in the past, 
however much any of us may be disposed to differ from cer- 
tain personal opinions which any of them may hold to-day. 

The Free Religious Association was a protest; and, hav- 
ing succeeded in this protest, it has died into eternal life : 
and there for the morning we will leave it, and turn to that 
which, while having no definite historical connection per- 
haps with it, we may yet regard in a certain way as its child 
and successor, the Ethical Culture movement. 

As I have already hinted, I do not mean to assert that the 
president of the Ethical Culture Society would recognize 
any historic connection between the movement for which he 
stands and the Free Religious Association ; but it seems to 
me that it is definitely and distinctly the logical carrying out 
of one, at least, of the tendencies which were represented 
in the older society. Many of those connected with the 
Free Religious Association were theistic ; many of them 
were agnostic. The entire basis of the Ethical Culture 
Society is agnosticism ; and so I believe that it represents 
the logical outcome of that wing of the Free Religious 
Association. 



Free Religion and Ethical Culture 75 

I ask you now to consider with me for a moment what this 
stands for, — the excuse for its existence as put forth by its 
representatives. I am not authorized to speak for the 
Ethical Culture Societies of America. It is possible I may 
use language which they would repudiate. I shall try, how- 
ever, to be as clear, simple, and fair as I can ; and, if I 
misrepresent, I shall be the first one to correct the misrepre- 
sentation when it has been pointed out to me. 

I am in thorough, hearty sympathy with so much in this 
Ethical Culture movement that it is easier to praise than it 
is to criticise. It sprang out of this fact : There are three 
main elements of religion as it is incorporated in the great 
historical religions and churches of the world. Churches are 
frequently so characterized that they lay special and peculiar 
emphasis on some one department of this rather than on 
the others. These three elements are doctrine, ritual, and 
conduct. The Ethical Culture men made the charge, and 
make it perpetually by the fact that they exist, that there has 
been too great an emphasis laid by the religions of the world 
upon doctrine and ritual ; and they propose, for the time 
being, to leave these chiefly out of sight, and call the world 
back to this matter of practical conduct, on which, they say, 
rest the entire welfare, prosperity, happiness, and future of 
mankind. 

Let us consider, for a moment, how grave the charges are 
that can be made by these men. Consider the fact as to 
the excessive emphasis laid on the matter of doctrine, — how 
important it has been considered, how over-important, and 
how, on account of this importance, matters of conduct have 
been neglected; not only neglected, but an emphasis has 
been laid on doctrine which has led to radically wrong con- 
duct. Matthew Arnold says that conduct is at least three- 
fourths of life. The Ethical Culture men would say that the 



7 6 



Signs of the Times 



practical purposes of life make up at least seven-eighths, that 
is, almost the whole. Doctrine is of importance only as it 
leads to conduct. Ritual is of importance only as it bears 
on conduct ; and, when men emphasize doctrine and put it 
in the place of chief importance, they are wronging the 
world. When they emphasize ritual and put it in the place 
of chief importance, they are wronging the world. 

Glance at one or two illustrations. Go back and find the 
old warfare, bitterness, and persecution between the Jews, 
and the Christians, — a persecution that has lasted to this cen- 
tury; and for what? Entirely from questions of doctrine. 
When, a few years ago, the grand old centenarian saint, Sir 
Moses Montefiore, died, a man illustrious his whole life long 
for the sweetness and amiability of his character and the 
magnificence and breadth of his charities, the question was 
raised in hundreds of churches as to whether to-day he was 
not suffering the torments of hell. Why ? For any question 
of good character ? Not at all. Simply on account of the 
differences of doctrine between the Jew and the Christian. 

There has been an age-long feud between the Greek 
Church and the Catholic Church. No one doubts that there 
are as good men in the Greek Church as in the Catholic, as 
charitable, kind, loving, and patriotic and public-spirited 
men ; yet there is a bitterness between those two churches 
that puts a gulf between them wider than between either of 
them and paganism. Why ? One cause is that the Catholic 
Church holds that Jesus was made of the same substance, or 
was of the same substance, as the Father ; while the Greek 
theologian said he was not of the same substance, but only of 
like substance. These questions and others like them split 
the Greek Church and the Catholic, and created this antag- 
onism which has lasted for centuries. 

And then think of the persecutions of the Protestants on 



Free Religion and Ethical Culture 77 

the part of the Catholics. Nobody has ever raised a ques- 
tion as to whether these Protestants were good and true men 
in their character and their daily life. It was such as 
whether they believed in transubstantiation, whether they 
believed in this or that doctrine. And so the world has 
fought and persecuted and hated, and rivers of blood have 
flowed, and cities have been razed to the ground, whole pop- 
ulations have been made homeless, simply on account of 
these quarrels over what the Ethical Culture man is ready 
to say nobody knows anything about or is ever likely to 
know. And this they offer as one reason for saying, We will 
cease utterly to have to do with these questions ; we will turn 
to the practical matters of life. 

Then take the matter of ritual. Curiously enough, men 
and women have been trained in such a way that they will 
lay more stress on some little form of service than they do 
even on a doctrine or the most serious questions of character 
and conduct. If I had time to trace the origin of these 
ideas, you would find how natural they were, how inevitable 
they were, in certain stages of human culture. But the Eth- 
ical Culture men believe that the time has come when sensi- 
ble people, at any rate, ought to know better, and ought to 
turn to something of more importance than these questions. 

Let me give you an illustration of what I mean. Go back 
to ancient Rome, before Christianity existed, and you find 
that, under the guidance of the priesthood, the extremest 
emphasis was laid on such questions as this : as to just where 
the sacrifices to the gods should be rendered ; as to precisely 
the nature, the character, the physical peculiarities of the 
victim ; as to what kind of wood should be burned in making 
the fire ; as to what kind of knife should be used in slaying 
the victim ; as to just how the priest should stand in the per- 
formance of the ritual ; as to whether he should face to one 



78 



Signs of the Times 



point of the compass or the other. At one place in the 
ritual the priest must stand on one foot : which must it 
be ? He must go through certain motions and gestures. He 
must intone the words that he pronounced in his religious 
service in a particular way. All these matters in the ritual 
were fixed hard and fast ; and the people came to believe 
that the gods they worshipped would not hear their prayers, 
would not grant the favors they desired, would not ward off 
the calamities they feared, if there was a mistake, even an 
unconscious mistake, in any of these little petty peculiarities 
of the ritual, so that it became of much more consequence 
than the character of the people. A priest might be utterly 
unworthy in his character and yet prevail with the gods, if he 
were exact in the ritual. But let him be the veriest saint 
that ever lived, if he made a mistake in the pronunciation of 
a word, in a gesture, his whole service went for nothing. 
We have not outgrown such ideas yet, even in the Christian 
Church. You are familiar with the fact that the city of 
London, and since that time the city of New York, in church 
quarters, have been convulsed by controversies that lasted 
for years over the question as to the robe that the priest 
should wear, — whether it should be of one color, or one 
pattern, or another. You know that the churches have quar- 
relled over the question whether the priest in saying certain 
prayers should face the east, take the eastward position, as 
it is called, or whether it were permissible to face in some 
other direction, — an old relic of sun-worship surviving and 
mighty still in Christianity. And you know also that there 
are persons — I fear they are not entirely wanting even in 
the liberal branch of the Christian Church — who place 
more emphasis on a question of ritual — of attendance at 
church, of reading the Bible, as to just how the Sabbath 
shall be observed — than they do on some very important 



Free Religion and Ethical Culture 79 

questions of character and conduct. I think I know certain 
liberals in good standing who would be troubled over what 
they would regard as an infringement of Sunday ; and yet 
they are not troubled over the fact that they pick their 
neighbor's character to pieces in a very slanderous way, are 
guilty of unkindness, of uncharitableness, of hard feelings, 
of hard speaking, guilty of a hundred things that interfere 
with the peace, the beauty, the growth of society. But, as 
Jesus said ages ago, they are very particular about the tithing 
of mint and anise and cumin. Jesus did not say that these 
were of no importance, but he said that other things were of 
a good deal more importance. And so the Ethical Culture 
men have said, Whatever others do, we propose to leave the 
other world out of account for the present. They take the 
position of Thoreau when he was dying. Parker Pillsbury 
sat by his bedside, and said, " Henry, as you get close to the 
border, do you see or hear anything from the other side ? " 
And Thoreau replied, " One world at a time, Parker." This 
is the position of the Ethical Culture men. 

But let me interject a sentence here in which I express my 
own opinions. Whether it is wise or not, — and I do not be- 
lieve it is wise, — in any case this strange, contradictory 
human nature of ours is such that it never will consent to 
take one world at a time. And, to my mind, this is the 
grandest thing about man, that he feels within himself throb- 
bing, pulsing, however blindly, something that he is con- 
vinced transcends this world ; and you will never get him 
to take one world at a time. 

But this was the position of the Ethical Culture men. 
They said, We do not think it is worth while to fight over 
the question whether the bread on the communion table is 
turned into the body of our Lord or the wine into his blood, 
while there are hundreds and thousands of people who have 



8o 



Signs of the Times 



bread of no description to eat. We do not think it is worth 
while to quarrel over the robes of priests, while thousands of 
people are suffering for the want of the ordinary clothing of 
life. And they carried out this idea, and said, We propose 
to devote ourselves to the work of saving this world, to the 
work of bringing it to a time when wars shall cease, when 
slavery shall be no more. We propose to reform business, 
to go into hospitals, heal the wounds, bind up the sores of 
those who need such care. We propose, if we can, to stay 
the flow of human tears, to heal the broken-hearted, to set at 
liberty those that are bound. We propose to devote our- 
selves to this world, to making it better, to lessening its 
burden, and to helping people live right here. And they 
said, We say nothing about any God. We do not propose 
to talk about him. If there be none, we will try to do the 
work that he would do if he existed. We do not propose to 
trouble about any future life. If there be one, we shall be 
ready for it if we try to live properly here. If there be none, 
then we will try to make this world, while we go through it, 
as comfortable as we can. 

This is the position, then, as I understand it, and the work 
which these men propose to themselves. 

Now I wish to offer, hardly in the way of criticism, — and 
yet it is criticism when you differ from a man and tell the 
reason why, — two suggestions touching the Ethical Cult- 
ure movement which shall constitute an explanation as to 
why I cannot join with them. 

I do not believe that they have taken a step towards 
breadth, towards depth, towards height. I regard the Ethi- 
cal Culture movement, as compared with the position which 
I try to occupy to-day, as a narrow, contracted position, as 
one bounded and hampered. I believe that I have basis, 
ground for all that is noble and grand in the Ethical Culture 
movement and something more. 



Free Religion and Ethical Culture 81 

In the first place, I do not think that Ethical Culture, if 
you confine yourself simply to that, has an adequate expla- 
nation for its existence in an agnostic theory of the uni- 
verse ; that is, in the theory of the universe which leaves out 
God as the source, the author, the inspiration of the moral 
life. I do not believe there is any adequate explanation for 
this fine and high enthusiasm which these men possess and 
manifest. 

Let me try to make myself clear, if I can. There is no 
difficulty, as we study human history, in tracing the origin 
and growth of the world's ideas of right and wrong. When 
two people stood face to face with each other, and recog- 
nized by the power of intelligent sympathy that each had 
equal rights, that each was capable of suffering, each was 
capable of enjoying, that each desired to possess certain 
things, then morality became recognized on the part of both 
of them. As society has grown in complexity, breadth, 
depth, height, as men have touched each other at more 
points, they have recognized more and more the delicacy of 
these questions of ethics, the questions of right and wrong. 

If, for example, people are to live together and own prop- 
erty, theft, of course, cannot be allowed. If they are to live 
together and transact business, indiscriminate and universal 
lying cannot be allowed. There must be a basis of trust in 
society ; and it is no very difficult feat of logic for a man to 
say, Since I live and enjoy life and would not like to be put 
to death, therefore I have no right to put another to death 
who also likes to live. So all these questions of practical 
ethics are plain and easy, no matter what theory of the uni- 
verse we have, whether there is any God or not, whether 
there is any future life or not. These questions are plain 
enough. 

But here is the difficulty, and one that deeply concerns 



82 



Signs of the Times 



this marvellous human nature of ours. The origin of any 
idea of right or wrong, the conception of myself as an imper- 
fect being, the desire to grow and expand, to become some- 
thing more and better, — all this has sprung from the fact 
that man is this curious being, the only one on earth, so far 
as we know, who dreams, who has an ideal of something 
finer, something more beautiful, something better than ever 
was. Where did he get it ? Where did he get this dream ? 
Where did he get this ideal ? Unless there be a power, a 
life, adequate to the dream, then it is something utterly un- 
explainable ; and if you say there is no God, and the dream 
came somehow out of matter, earth, soil, why then you must 
change your definition of soil. You must have a kind of 
earth that thinks, feels, recognizes the principle of justice, 
that can pity, that cares for peace on earth, that knows 
what it is to be tender and kind and loving, and that can 
blossom into a Jesus. And, when you get that, I defy any- 
body to tell me the difference between that and what I mean 
when I say spirit or God. If, then, man is a moral being, 
if he dreams of something that transcends him forever and 
makes his life an eternal pursuit, that demands something 
that the Ethical Culturist philosophy says must be left out 
of account because we do not know anything about it, I 
differ from the Ethical Culture men right there. 

I differ radically in another way. I do not believe that 
the Ethical Culturist can give me any adequate reason, any 
adequate motive, for the kind of life he wants me to live. 
If there is no future, if, when we lie down in the dust, that 
is the end of us, and if, after a certain length of time, this 
whole world and all that we see are to come to an end, and 
there is to be nothing but what we call dead matter again, 
then on that theory of the universe there is no adequate 
motive for the kind of moral life that the finest of these 



Free Religion and Ethical Culture 83 

Ethical Culture men both illustrate and demand. When I 
hear Felix Adler, for example, at his best, I think I am 
listening to one of the old Hebrew prophets, — a man in- 
spired, a man on fire with the noblest enthusiasm, and a 
man who, by the way, at every third sentence, as it seems to 
me, implies what I believe in of God and the future, and 
denies his own premises. So much finer must I regard his 
spiritual nature than the logic of his position. 

It is true, if the world is only going to live for one day, 
and then we are to sink into nothingness — true even then 
that it would be better for people not to steal, not to be 
unkind, not to be cruel, not to cut each other's throats, to 
obey the practical principles of morality ; but, if there is no 
grand future, then I say a practical, adequate motive for 
doing these things seems to me to be wanting. Morality 
would last, but it would entirely change its nature. 

Take an illustration. Suppose I knew that I am to live 
just one year from to-day, and then am to die. I should 
lay out my life on a scale adapted to that brief period. If, 
on the other hand, I could be sure that I am going to live 
twenty-five years more, do you not see how natural it would 
be for me to lay out my life on another scale? It would 
change the whole purpose, scope, and emphasis of my life. 
So I believe, if this world is the end, it would still be better, 
if you can get people to see it, for them to live true, noble, 
moral, and helpful lives ; but the grandeur of the motive is 
taken away. I think the finest thought from the agnostic 
point of view in our literature is that wonderfully sweet and 
beautiful " Choir Invisible " : — 

" O may I join the choir invisible 
Of those immortal dead who live again 
In minds made better by their presence : live 
In pulses stirred to generosity, 



8 4 



Signs of the Times 



In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 

For miserable aims that end with self, 

In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, 

And with their mild persistence urge man's search 

To vaster issues. 

" So to live is heaven : 
To make undying music in the world, 
Breathing as beauteous order that controls 
With growing sway the growing life of man. 

" This is life to come, 
Which martyred men have made more glorious 
For us who strive to follow. May I reach 
That purest heaven, be to other souls 
The cup of strength in some great agony, 
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, 
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty, — 
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, 
And in diffusion ever more intense. 
So shall I join the choir invisible, 
Whose music is the gladness of the world." 

This is the song of the agnostic, the song of the Ethical 
Culturist, as she would undoubtedly have called herself had 
she been here. But it seems to me that here is the flame of 
a religious fire kindled on the altar of faith in a future life; 
for all the way through it carries the implication that some- 
how she is to be there, rejoicing in all this glory that she has 
helped to create. Yet, on her theory, she is to be simply 
a memory then, and know nothing of all this grand thing 
that came to be. 

To face the matter frankly and squarely, I think we have 
a right to ask the Ethical Culture men to tell us why. Why 
should I do ? If there is no God, if there is no intelligence, 
no goodness, no life in the universe, then my happiness is 
just as important as the happiness of a man who perhaps will 
live five hundred years from now. When he comes, if he 



Free Religion and Ethical Culture 



85 



dares to be happy, it will be just as wrong as it is for me to 
be happy to-day. Why, then, should I go without? Why 
should I suffer, why should I sacrifice, why should I crucify 
myself to make him have a pleasant time when he is born, 
when the end after all is that both of us will cease to be, 
and there is nobody to know and nobody to care ? It seems 
to me that the mainspring and motive for sacrifice are taken 
away. Why should a man be a martyr, extinguish life itself? 
Why, Ethical Culture exists simply to make life as comfort- 
able and pleasant as possible. Martyrdom is its rednctio ad 
absurdum. It is a contradiction of the very purpose for 
which it exists. Why should Jesus go to the cross, if that is 
the end of Jesus, simply that somebody else might not suffer 
the pang that was inflicted upon him ? Why should the men 
in the East End of London to-day be quiet, orderly, well- 
behaved, and let the Duke of Westminster, who owns almost 
acres of the city of London, ride in his carriages and eat his 
dinners in perfect peace, when he has never lifted a finger or 
done one stroke of work to earn that which he enjoys and 
for the lack of which they starve ? If there is nothing be- 
yond, if there is no hope to buoy them up, if there is no 
grand purpose in bearing up, why not nihilism and rebellion 
for the sake of getting whatever of the world's enjoyment 
they can before we all go into the dust together, and the 
tragical farce is done ? 

The Ethical Culture men say that doctrine is of impor- 
tance only as it leads to conduct, that ritual is of importance 
only as it leads to conduct. I say there is something more 
important than doctrine not only, something more important 
than ritual not only ; there is something more important 
than conduct even. The doctrine and the ritual and the 
conduct are means to an end, exist for something that tran- 
scends them all. What is that something ? Life. The 



86 



Signs of the Times 



greatest men of the world have been athirst for the infinite 
life. They have been lifted up by this unquenchable in- 
stinct, this insatiable thirst for the infinite life. And this 
thirst must be satisfied. You must have a theory of the 
universe that will explain it, or you have no true theory ; and 
it can be explained only when we suppose that the infinite 
life of which we are children, in the silence of the soul is 
calling to us and saying, " Be ye perfect even as your Father 
in heaven is perfect." This theory, and this alone, I believe 
runs a line of light and rationality through the long struggle 
of the world. I believe that the one thing for which every 
soul exists is to eternally thirst for and find God. 

" Rivers to the ocean run, 

Nor stay in all their course ; 
Fire ascending seeks the sun, — 

Both speed them to their source. 
So a soul that's born of God 

Pants to view his glorious face, 
Upward tends to his abode, 
To rest in his embrace." 



SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM. 



It does not seem to me at all strange that there should 
exist, as one of the signs of the times, this fact of scientific 
materialism. In the break-up of the old faith, men will natu- 
rally reach out in this direction and that, trying to find some 
consistent theory of things. For all people who think at all 
must try to think things through far enough, at any rate, to 
discover a place of mental rest. There are thousands in 
the modern world who are half inclined to a materialistic 
theory of things, but who have not thought it through to see 
just what it means, to find out whether they can explain 
the more important facts of life on that theory. They are 
confused and troubled as they try to think and believe in 
God. The world is not governed as they would suppose it 
would be by an all-powerful, all-wise, and all-loving being. 
They begin to wonder whether there is any other way of ex- 
plaining it. 

Livingstone somewhere tells of a conversation that he had 
with an old Bechuana chief in Africa, a man who must have 
been much superior to the ordinary members of his tribe. 
He says that the old chief said to him : Sometimes I leave 
my kraal and go out and sit down on a stone, and think and 
wonder. I look up to the sky, I see the clouds floating over- 
head, and try to make out what they are, where they came 
from, where they are going, who made them. And at night 
under the stars I wonder what all this means : Who am I, 
what am I, where did I come from, what is my nature, where 



S3 



Signs of the Times 



am I going, what does all this scene of the world and of 
mankind mean ? Others besides the Bechuana chief have 
asked this question, and others besides him have been puz- 
zled for an answer. We are far enough advanced in our 
thought to-day to see that the answer must be in one direc- 
tion or the other : it must be God, or it must be scientific 
materialism, — one or the other, which ? 

The progress of human thought has been from the first 
towards unity. You know that it is a part of the formula of 
evolution to state the fact that all growth is from the homo- 
geneous to the heterogeneous, from the simple to the com- 
plex. This is illustrated well enough in the case of the 
growth of the oak. Here is an acorn, perfectly simple, ap- 
parently of similar substance all through. You plant it. 
There comes up a little sprout first from the earth, one stem. 
This stem divides and branches this way and that until there 
are a thousand twigs and leaves : the growth is from the 
simple towards the complex. 

As we try to explain the meaning of life, we reverse that 
process. We begin with the multiplicity of things, and we 
think towards unity. We try to find some simple force, 
power, cause, out of which all these things that we see may 
have been developed ; and the question is whether this one 
substance, if we can find it, is spirit or matter, God or the 
world without God. 

I wish to illustrate how, in a few departments, this process 
of thought has been carried on. The companions of the old 
Bechuana chief, barbaric men in all ages, have explained 
the multiplicity of things by the multiplicity of causes and 
powers. There have been as many gods in their imagina- 
tions as there have been facts and forces in the world around 
them. Thousands of things, thousands of deities as the 
causes of those things. But the intelligent part of the world 



Scientific Materialism 



8 9 



has progressed far enough to see one God, one force, one 
element, and to look for one far-off event, whether divine or 
not, and divine or not according to the theory you hold. 

The same process of seeking for unity has gone on in 
other departments of thought. There is a multiplicity of 
nations ; but we know that these nations, many of them, 
have sprung from some common source. So we trace back 
towards the twilight of the world; and we see fewer and 
fewer, until the conviction is forced upon us that, if God has 
not made of one blood all nations who dwell on the face 
of the earth, at any rate they have been developed from one 
blood, that all peoples are one, have one essential nature. 
So in regard to a thousand of the great facts of the world. 
The tendency everywhere is towards unity, towards rinding 
some one common substance underlying the diversity of 
form, towards finding some one force as the explanation of 
the multiplicity of forces. We find this same process going 
on in chemistry. There used to be supposed to be no end 
of elements. Chemical investigation has reduced them to 
fewer and fewer. It has been found out that the diversity 
of form, of taste, of color, of force in every direction, while 
it exists, does not mean necessarily so wide a diversity of 
substance, but that these various forms are the result only 
of the various combinations of a few simple elements. We 
cannot understand how it is, but we know the fact. We 
know that the combination of precisely the same elements in 
some mysterious way produces the most marked diversity of 
result. We know that a bit of coal and a diamond are com- 
posed of precisely the same elements. It must be some 
curious variety of arrangement of the particles. We do not 
know what it is that produces the difference, but they are 
the same at bottom. So we know it is a chemical fact 
that there are certain substances that are healthful and some 



go 



Signs of the Times 



that are deadly poison, but yet they contain the same chemi- 
cal elements. How it is that they produce such diverse re- 
sults we have not as yet been able to discover. One of the 
most magnificent discoveries of the scientific world tends in 
this direction. We talk about light, heat, magnetism, elec- 
tricity, and they seem as different as different can be. Yet 
we have discovered what is called the law of the transfor- 
mation of energy. We know that all these different forces 
are one. They are nothing else but different modes of mo- 
tion. So the tendency, as I said, in all directions of inves- 
tigation is towards unity. When we consider the fact that 
the physical scientist has achieved so much, has attained 
such wonderful results in his different departments of 
thought, we must not wonder if he becomes a little proud, 
apparently arrogant, if he fancies that he holds in his hand 
the key of the explanation of everything. He has unlocked 
so many doors that he sees no reason why he should con- 
sider that there is any door which he cannot unlock, until it 
be proved to the contrary. 

The old Greeks speculated as to how all the universe, as 
we see it, might have been produced as the result of the 
movements of little atoms. Some of the Roman philoso- 
phers speculated in the same direction ; but, when Christian- 
ity came, it for a time absorbed into itself all the scientific 
and philosophic minds of the civilized world, and turned 
them aside from these paths of physical investigation. But, 
with the growth of scepticism in these recent centuries, — 
scepticism concerning the finality of what has been called 
divine truth, — scientific men have taken up this old specula- 
tion once more, and are beginning to discuss the question 
whether the universe, including men, all we are and all we 
may be, is not explicable in the light of a purely physical 
theory of things. 



Scientific Materialism 



91 



The scientist deals with matter and force. He is ready to 
say, Give me matter and force and unlimited time, and it is 
conceivable how out of this may have come all we know, all we 
see, all we hope for. Tyndall within recent years has raised 
a discussion in both Europe and America by declaring it as 
his opinion that matter contained within itself " the promise 
and potency of every form of life." Right there, then, is the 
question, Does matter contain the promise and the potency 
of every form of life ? Has the clod beneath our feet within 
its mysterious depth the fountain and source of the soul, our 
dream of God and immortality ? This is the question. Only 
if you come to the conclusion that scientific materialism can 
explain these things, then you must remember, — though I 
would not have that prejudice you against a careful search 
as to just what is true, — you must remember that it pre- 
cludes any belief in God, any belief in immortality. For, if 
life be the result of organization, then, when organization 
ceases to exist, of course life ceases to exist with it. Gau- 
tama believed this so far as the individual was concerned, 
and compared himself to a chariot. A chariot is of such a 
form and color and such construction. It moves under the 
impulse of the appropriate power. It is what it is by virtue 
of the relation of its parts to each other. Take it to pieces, 
and there is no chariot any longer. So he believed that, 
when death, when the force of disintegration, took man to 
pieces, that man as an individual ceased to exist. 

If this theory then be true, we are only the products of 
this mysterious material force round us, just as are flowers 
and plants. The beauty and the promise exist for a little 
while. Then frost nips them, and they go back to dust; 
and that is the end of the individual flower. Other flowers 
will bloom next year ; but that flower never appeared before 
in all the ages, and never will appear again to the end of time. 



92 



Signs of the Times 



I speak of this that you may understand the question at 
issue, because, as I said, I think there are hundreds and 
thousands of people who speculate carelessly and crudely in 
this direction or that without having thought the thing through 
to see clearly what the issue involved must be. 

A man who starts with this theory of scientific materialism 
assumes generally that he knows matter and knows force. 
People very commonly delude themselves with this idea. 
They know what a brick is. They know what a bowlder is. 
They have seen a brick. They have handled it, and know 
how solid, how hard, how real it is ; but they say, Nobody 
ever saw a soul, nobody ever saw thought, nobody ever han- 
dled a feeling. These they regard as evanescent, elusive, 
shadowy, flitting, coming and going, and so, unreal. But 
they say, I know matter. I know what that is. That is 
something I come in contact with every day. 

Here I wish to call you to consciousness of the fact that 
just precisely the reverse of this is true. The only things 
that any man knows, ever did know, ever can know, are the 
facts of consciousness. I know I think, I know I feel, I 
know I hope, I know I fear, I know I love. But what do I 
know about this desk ? The existence of the desk is merely 
a matter of inference. I reach out my hand, and touch what 
I call this desk ; and I feel something that seems to me hard. 
I feel a force that resists my pressure; but what is it? This 
feeling of resistance is only a fact of my consciousness. I 
look at it, and I see what I call shape and color ; but what 
are shape and color ? Facts again of consciousness. Sup- 
pose I attempt to lift it. I say it is heavy. What do I 
mean by heavy ? I mean and can only mean another fact of 
consciousness. Something resists the pull of my muscles; 
and the pull of my muscles is simply an expression of my 
will. All we know directly of any force in this universe is 



Scientific Materialism 



93 



the force of the will. The source then and the root of this 
wondrous show of things, — these are only inferences from 
facts of consciousness ; so that what we really know is spirit, 
what we really know is mind, what we really know is thought, 
is consciousness. Suppose you take the bowlder that you 
think you know so much about. Apply a sufficient amount 
of heat to it, and you can make it molten ; more heat still, 
and it evaporates as steam ; more still, and it has disap- 
peared in the air, is absolutely lost to the cognizance of 
every one of our senses. Where is it gone? Pursue an 
atom. Scientific men themselves confess that they do not 
know what an atom is ; they have never seen one. They are 
too small to be seen or touched by the most delicate instru- 
ment of scientific investigation. What is an atom ? Nobody 
knows. Pursue the atom, and all you can find is what Fara- 
day, one of the most famous chemists of the world, called a 
point of force. What a point of force is even Faraday did 
not know. So this matter that seems so solid, so real, so 
simple, fades off into the infinite mystery ; and all you know 
again are the facts of consciousness. 

Suppose for a few moments we consider this matter as 
something very real. Let us treat it in the ordinary com- 
mon-sense way. Let us take matter made up of atoms aggre- 
gated into molecules, and so into larger aggregations until 
they are piled into mountains and massed into stars and 
solar systems. If all that exists is merely the result of cer- 
tain modifications of these atoms of matter, then what ? 
Then it seems to me that we must change our definition of 
matter so completely as to make it identical practically with 
spirit. For we know, as I said, that thought exists, feeling 
exists, consciousness exists ; and we know that whatever 
exists as a fact to be observed must have existed in the cause 
that produces that fact, — that is, the mind demands an ade- 



94 



Signs of the Times 



quate cause as the explanation of any result. If, then, mat- 
ter is identical with soul, with thought, with feeling, with 
fear, with love, with hope, with consciousness, then matter is 
spirit and spirit is matter; and it is no matter which term 
you use. 

I propose now to raise two or three objections to the 
theory of scientific materialism, — objections that seem to me 
absolutely unanswerable. If we assume that matter and 
spirit are practically identical, then that means the death 
of the theory of scientific materialism once for all. 

Considering matter, then, in the ordinary way, it seems to 
me utterly impossible for us, on the theory of materialism, 
to explain the fact of life. No scientific man has ever yet 
been able to trace the origin of the lowest form of life to 
anything except some pre-existing form of life. Life the 
parent of life always and everywhere. Life never yet said 
father and mother to that which was dead. The difference, 
then, between the smallest particle of protoplasm and the 
smallest pinch of dust, one of them being alive and the 
other not alive, is an impassable gulf, which cannot conceiv- 
ably be crossed by the human mind. Indeed, the wisest 
scientific men of the world admit this. They say that, while 
thought corresponds to and, so far as we know, is insepara- 
ble from certain molecular movements in the brain, that yet 
the thought is no part of these molecular movements, does not 
seem to be the product of them, and is utterly inexplicable in 
the light of these movements. Tyndall himself admits — I 
have quoted him on one side, and I will now quote him, in 
substance, on the other — that the difference between feeling 
and matter has never been explained and cannot conceivably 
be explained, and that modern science is no nearer to the 
solution of the problem than was the earliest man who ever 
asked the question. Life, then, cannot be explained in the 
light of this theory of scientific materialism. 



Scientific Materialism 



95 



One other thing it seems to me utterly impossible to ex- 
plain on that theory, and that is the fact that men talk about 
certain things as right and certain other things as wrong. 
How does it happen, if man is only a temporary aggregation 
of particles of matter, produced without any will, produced 
without any consciousness, produced without any moral 
sense, without his own will or consciousness or moral sense, 
any thought of which he is the outcome, how does it happen 
that this clod of matter should stand upon its feet and look 
into the sky, look round over the world, and criticise other 
aggregations of matter as good or as bad ; should look into 
the sky and feel like demanding of some power an explana- 
tion for what it feels to be the evils of life ? On that theory 
there is no court to which an appeal can be sent up. No- 
body is responsible for it ; nobody did it ; there is no mind 
to think about it, no heart to care about it, no hand to make 
anything better, no purpose to plan a result that shall be 
grander. 

How does it happen, then, on this theory, that the thought 
of the distinction between right and wrong should ever 
exist ? I will warrant that no bowlder in the field ever had 
any accusation to bring against any other bowlder. No 
flower ever found fault with any other flower. No wild ani- 
mal in the woods ever had a conception of justice in the 
relation in which he stood to any other wild animal. It is 
only when we come up to self-conscious man that there is 
the dawn of this grandest of all faculties, the moral sense of 
right and wrong, the thirst for justice, the desire for the bet- 
terment of the world's affairs. 

Then there is another thing that, it seems to me, material- 
ism utterly fails to explain ; and that is the essential fact of 
religion, the fact of worship, the recognition of something 
above man that seems to him admirable, that fills his soul 



9 6 



Signs of the Times 



with awe, with glory, that lifts him, that thrills him with the 
thought of the sublime. In those very familiar lines of 
Byron you remember he says : — 

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, 
There is a rapture on the lonely shore, 
There is society, where none intrudes," — 

What pleasure, what rapture, what society, if Byron was 
merely an aggregation of material particles, and if he stood 
only in the presence of certain other aggregations of mate- 
rial particles ? Why should one mass of matter look with 
reverence and awe on matter of precisely the same kind and 
quality ? 

Then, what I have many times pointed out, but something 
that sweeps over me more and more every time I think of it, 
man is the only being on earth who dreams things better 
than ever were. Where did he get the dream ? How, if he 
is simply the product of material experience, does he tran- 
scend that experience ? How does he create an ideal world 
so much finer than this that he calls it the kingdom of 
heaven ? And then, gathering all the resources of his own 
brain and heart and imagination and enthusiasm, bring them 
to bear on the work of realizing the kingdom of heaven ? 

No, friends, these things, it seems to me, find no answer, 
not even an approach to an explanation, in any materialistic 
theory of the world. 

Consider for a moment. Man in all ages, crude where he 
was crude, barbaric where he was barbaric, ignorant where 
he was ignorant, cruel where he was cruel, man in all ages of 
necessity has dreamed God. Man in all ages has dreamed 
soul. Man in all ages has dreamed immortal life. Now, 
these dreams, the most flitting fancy that ever passed like a 
cloud across the horizon of the human mind, — these are 



Scientific Materialism 



97 



facts, these are realities. These are parts of human nature 
to be accounted for, to be explained, as much as a table, a 
bowlder, or a mountain. If there be no facts in the universe 
corresponding in any way to these grand dreams, then how 
were they born? No one ever saw the north pole. We 
know indeed that what we call the north pole of the earth 
does not point precisely towards the true north. No one 
ever saw any true north. Yet we know there is a true north, 
because the magnetic needle points forever towards it. The 
needle proves the existence of the power that controls it. 
This human heart has always pointed Godward, soulward, 
immortalityward, justiceward, truthward. It has always 
pointed towards these high ideals, and it seems to me abso- 
lute demonstration that there must be somewhere in this 
universe something adequate to these ; or else they are facts 
without a cause. Let me look at a coin, let me examine the 
impress of it, the figure, the words, the date, and do I not 
know, though I never saw it, and though it may have been 
destroyed a thousand years ago, that there was once a die 
corresponding to them ? 

We stand in relation to this universe as the coin to the 
die, and whatever is in us has been put there as a result ; 
and there must be in the universe somewhere something 
creatively corresponding to these, something corresponding 
to my ideal of God, my ideal of the soul, my ideal of im- 
mortality, my dream of justice, my hope for progress, my 
thoughts of the good and the beautiful. There must be 
something in the universe corresponding to these to have 
created these. 

So it seems to me, after the best thought that I can give 
to the subject, that materialism as an explanation of you and 
me is what Mr. Fiske has declared it to be, crude science 
and exploded philosophy. Not only is it hopeless, not only 



9 3 



Signs of the Times 



does it put us in the hands of an iron and careless necessity, 
not only does it mock our dream of perfect justice on earth, 
not only does it lay its cold hand of repression on every 
high ideal, not only does it quench the light of human 
dreams, not only does it turn all our ideals to folly, but it is 
condemned in the light of the facts of human nature as un- 
worthy the clearest and finest thought, as it is unsatisfactory 
to the noblest hearts of the world. Not only that; for I be- 
lieve with those who are seeking a monistic explanation of 
the universe that at the bottom the universe is one, that 
thought is one, that life is one, that spirit is one as God is 
one. And, if that be true, then dream and hope and love 
and strive on still, for you cannot dream anything so grand 
as the reality, you cannot imagine any high ideal of justice 
that shall not be within grasp, you cannot have any hopes 
too fair, you cannot have any desires too high ; for if God, 
life, truth, love, justice, goodness, — if these are the heart 
of things, then, though it still doth not appear what we shall 
be, we know that, in spite of our present imperfection and 
discouragement, we shall some day "be like him." The 
prayer of the ages will be answered that we may be perfect 
even as our Father in heaven is perfect. 



INGERSOLLISM. 



The ideas of which Colonel Ingersoll is at present the 
most prominent exponent in the country are not new. I 
suppose he would not claim that they are. Neither are his 
methods original, except in so far as they spring out of his 
personal characteristics and peculiarities. His ideas are 
very largely those of Voltaire, of Gibbon, of Hume, of 
Thomas Paine, of Thomas Jefferson, of Benjamin Franklin, 
and of a good many other of our Revolutionary heroes. And, 
curiously enough, they are largely the ideas of many of the 
most intelligent Biblical critics of the modern world. Many 
of these Biblical critics are still nominally connected with 
the orthodox churches. Colonel Ingersoll's ideas of the 
Bible, for example, are largely shared by such men as Bishop 
Colenso, Professor Robertson Smith, the famous Scotch 
divine and critic, and by many another whom, if it were 
worth while, I could name. The ideas, then, are not new; 
but he has so identified himself in the popular mind with 
these ideas that they have come to take his name, and so he 
stands before the world as one of the marked Signs of the 
Times. Perhaps it would be fair to say that these ideas are 
his in the sense in which Hamlet belongs to Shakspere. 
Shakspere borrowed the story and almost all its incidents ; 
yet to-day, when we speak of Hamlet the Dane, it is not the 
historical character, it is the creation of Shakspere, that we 
have in mind. So, when we deal with this subject, we do 



100 



Signs of the Times 



not go back to the sources whence Colonel Ingersoll has 
derived these ideas ; but we naturally and inevitably think of 
him, because he has made himself their popular, prominent 
exponent. I propose to deal with him therefore, personal!}-, 
only so far as is necessary to understand the Sign of the 
Times which he represents. But he has woven his own 
personality into his work to so large an extent that we shall 
have to deal with this personality. What sort of a man 
then is he ? 

He is, in the first place, a prominent and successful lawyer. 
He was an officer in the army. I first heard of him when 
he was practising in Peoria, 111. Thence he went to Wash- 
ington ; and he is now living in New York. I have heard 
only one charge ever brought against him, outside of his re- 
ligious opinions ; and that I perhaps should note very briefly. 
I speak of this because there are those who feel that the 
character of the man who stands as the exponent of a relig- 
ious — or, if you choose to call it so, an irreligious — move- 
ment is a large factor in that movement. It has been 
charged upon Colonel Ingersoll that as a lawyer he became 
connected with a cause which has left a stigma and stain 
upon his name, — his defence of two of the men who were 
implicated in what was popularly known as the " Star Route 
Frauds." I shall not undertake either to accuse or to defend 
him in this matter. I confess to you I do not know enough 
about it either to condemn or to vindicate. I only know 
this : that I believe Colonel Ingersoll to be an earnest and 
sincere man ; and when, some years ago in Washington, I 
asked him about his connection with this case, he answered 
me, even with flaming indignation, asserting that, according 
to his own conviction, the part he had played had been an 
honorable and true part. And I know enough of him to 
know this : if he believed that he was acting a manly part, 



Ingersollism 



IOI 



the accusations, the indignation, the howls, of a whole coun- 
try at his heels, would only make him defend his position 
the more tenaciously. 

What else is he ? He is beyond question, in my judgment, 
the most remarkable popular orator to-day on earth. I 
do not say in this country : I say anywhere, so far as 
I know. I have heard the best speakers of this country ; I 
have heard some of the best speakers in England, including 
Mr. Gladstone ; and I do not know of a man living who has 
such mighty mastery over a popular audience as has he. 
And the secret of his power is not far to seek. He is 
master of expression, wonderful in his power to mould and 
shape words to the utterance of his thought. Then he is a 
poet. I have brought here a book of selections from his 
utterances. I would like to read extracts illustrating the 
points I make if there were time. I could read you little 
bits, six or eight or ten lines, that are prose poems, not 
only rough gems of thought, but fine-cut jewels of expression, 
beautiful as flowers, and fragrant with lovely ideas. 

Then he has what any popular orator must have, — a deep, 
high, broad sympathy with whatever is human. I shall 
touch on this later. I only wish to say now that there is 
nothing that touches the interests or the welfare of men that 
does not find echo in his heart and brain. He feels with a 
power that is simply colossal ; and this I believe to be the 
key to his character more than anything else with which 
I am acquainted. 

He is, then, the mightiest popular orator of the world 
to-day in my opinion, and this without any regard to the 
subject that he touches. He is not popular merely when he 
deals with the question of religion. The first time I heard 
him it was a political address ; and I found myself shaken 
with laughter and moved to tears, just as he chose to play 



102 



Signs of the Times 



upon me, quite as much as when I have heard him upon any 
other theme. 

Another quality that gives him popular power, and that he 
possesses in an unsurpassed degree, is wit, humor, such as 
very few other living men possess. It is not of purpose, of 
malice aforethought, that he ridicules. The wit and the 
humor bubble up as naturally as do the waters of a spring. 
He does not hunt for his humorous expressions and witti- 
cisms. I have heard him for an evening through in private 
conversation, rippling and bubbling with humor and wit as 
naturally as the sunshine shimmers on a summer sea. He is 
one of the most entertaining men in private conversation that 
I ever have seen. 

These are the qualities that make him so mighty as a pop- 
ular exponent of anything that he chooses to advocate. 

Is he an honest man ? Does he believe himself to be a 
reformer, or is he only a vulgar, cheap sensationalist, who is 
prostituting 'these divine gifts to which I have referred for 
the purpose of making money ? This is the common charge 
that is made against him. And let me note here that this 
is almost the only charge that is made against him, and for 
the very significant reason that there is no other that can be 
made, even for a moment, to stick. I claim no authority in 
answering this : I only express an individual opinion. I be- 
lieve, however, that he is as honest and earnest as was ever 
John Calvin, or Richard Baxter, or Jonathan Edwards. I 
believe he is as sincere in whatever you choose to call them, 
his religious or his irreligious opinions, as any man that ever 
lived or ever spoke. 

Consider for a moment. Does he need to lecture on 
religious subjects in order to get money ? If he had no 
other resources, or if he could earn thrice as much in this 
way as in any other, and devoted himself exclusively or 



Ingersollism 



103 



largely to this, there might be some basis for the charge. It 
is true that, if he is advertised to speak on any religious 
subject, in almost any city in the country, without anybody 
except his own agent to advertise the fact, with no manipula- 
tion on the part of committee or manager, he can pack the 
largest halls at almost any price that he chooses to charge. 
But he is able to make money as a successful lawyer ; he 
is overrun with business. He can make money, and he does, 
all that he wishes or needs, in other ways. He can make 
money as a lecturer equally well, whatever his subject. 
I came across a noteworthy slip from a newspaper, describ- 
ing an evening spent by Mr. Abbey, the well-known theatri- 
cal manager, at a soiree where Colonel Ingersoll had been 
talking about Shakspere. Mr. Abbey expressed it as his 
opinion that, if the ideas uttered that evening in private 
conversation were embodied in a lecture, it would be the 
grandest lecture on Shakspere that the world ever heard ; 
and, furthermore, he expressed his opinion as a business man- 
ager by saying that he would be willing to guarantee Colonel 
Ingersoll one hundred thousand dollars a year if he would 
go over the country lecturing for him, and let him act as 
his manager. So it is not simply as a religious disputant 
that he is competent to make money enough to live on. 
Then it seems to me that, so long as the great majority of 
ministers feel the divine call to leave a small parish and a 
poor salary to go to a large parish and a large salary in 
some city, it is not quite safe for them to trust to the attempt 
to blacken his character by charging him with being under 
the influence of pecuniary motives. I believe, then, that he 
is honest and sincere. 

Not only this. I believe he has sacrificed, and sacrificed 
largely, for his opinions. The story goes that, when he was 
a lawyer in Peoria, a friend came one day into his office. 



104 



Signs of the Times 



Looking over his library, he came across a copy of Paine's 
"Age of Reason." " How much did this cost you ? " he in- 
quired. The answer came quick, " The governorship of Illi- 
nois ! " Whether said or not, this is doubtless true. No 
man in the country to-day is more conspicuously gifted with 
all those qualities that make a man popular than is he. 
And, in my judgment, there is no office in the gift of the 
people, not excepting the White House itself, that he might 
not have reasonably expected to gain, provided he had been 
willing to even keep still. He need not have changed his 
opinions: it would have been enough if he had done as 
many others do, — covered them up. But he has chosen to 
pay the price of appearing what he is. In an age of so 
much dodging and posturing for effect, let us at least appre- 
ciate and honor the honesty that dares to speak its mind. 

Now what is his religious position ? What are his antece- 
dents ? His father was a Presbyterian clergyman. By the 
time he was sixteen years of age, he was thoroughly conver- 
sant with the Old Testament, and had begun that criticism 
of it which is so familiar now to the world ; and his father 
confessed that he did not know how to answer him. The 
confession of his father will do very well for the confession 
of most other people who have attempted to answer him 
since then, so far as these points are concerned. 

There is one little glimpse of his boyhood that I heard 
him give once in a lecture, which I will attempt to repro- 
duce, not in his own words, but in mine, showing what the 
boy was thinking of, what the tendency of his mind was 
even at that early time ; and there is such a sympathy with 
that kind of boyhood in my own heart, as I look back to my 
childish experience, that it touched me very deeply, whether 
it will touch you or not. He said : I remember one after- 
noon in spring. I was out in the orchard. I looked up 



Ingersollism 



105 



and saw the bright blue sky with clouds sailing across it. I 
listened, and the air was full of bird-song. I leaned up 
against an apple-tree that was all a-blossom over my head, 
filling the air with fragrance. I stood there, that sunny, per- 
fect afternoon, and thought of — hell. That is what was 
pressing upon his heart. How many times do I remember 
a similar experience, lying on my back in the grass, watch- 
ing the sky and the clouds, half listening to the birds, and 
thinking eternity, eternity, eternity, until I almost swooned 
with trying to grasp the conception, and thinking what it 
would be to endure eternal pain ! This is the kind of 
childhood that thousands and thousands of boys have gone 
through in this country, and in all the past of Christendom. 

His father was a Presbyterian clergyman ; and it has been 
charged against him, over and over again, that he was utterly 
lacking in reverence, even for his parents, in attacking Pres- 
byterianism so bitterly as he has done. I wish to give you 
his idea of honoring his father and mother. He says : " You 
never can honor your father by going round swearing to his 
mistakes. You never can honor your mother by saying that 
ignorance is blessed because she did not know everything. 
I want to honor my parents by finding out more than they 
did." 

I think that is sufficient answer. It is exaggerated and 
unwise honor to parents that has created China the stagnant 
nation that it is. Suppose the human race had begun back 
in the stone age to honor father and mother in such a way 
as to consider it wicked to learn anything that they had not 
known, we should be in the stone age still. The way to 
honor father and mother is to try to make a better world for 
their grandchildren. 

We are ready now to consider the religious position that 
this man occupies. I wish to try fairly and simply to inter- 



io6 Sig7is of tlie Times 

pre: it to you as best I can. He is known, fair';: I think, 
more than for anything else, as the grea: red-no: antagonist 
of those teachings of the Church which he regards as in:ar- 
nate crueirv. The ^rea: thins he attacks is the trthtdox 



rams the brain into a dungeon, and prevents human prog- 
ress. 

Now iet me refer to what I hinted a iittie while ago. his 
sympathy. This I said, and I repea: i:. I look upon as the 

is as responsive to all the movements of life and thought 

from the front ; and, as I preached, I naturally watched him. 

there was a sharp remark, a smile would play over his face; 
and, when anything tender was said, tears would start and 
run down his cheeks, while he was so absorbed in listening 
that he did not rouse himself to consciousness of their pres- 
en:e even en:ugh to wipe them away. He seemed to be a:: 
instrument to be played on. as perfect in that direction as he 
has found the hearts and brains of other people instruments 
on which he can play. This tremendous power of sympathy 
turns him into a flaming hatred of anything that seems to 
him causeless, inexcusable crueirv*. So this one great, nor- 



Ingersollism 



107 



rible, world-shadowing dogma of eternal hate has been the 
one thing that he has devoted his life to fighting. 

Let us note a few of the things that he believes and a few 
that he does not believe, without special regard to logical 
order. 

What does he believe about God ? He is not an atheist. 
He is only what Huxley and Herbert Spencer and a great 
many of the best scientific men of the world are to-day, an 
agnostic. You ask him if there is a God in the universe, 
and he says, "I do not know." He only feels sure that there 
is no such God as the one which has been set forth in the 
creeds of the orthodox churches. He does not fight against 
God. He fights only against certain partial, incomplete, 
unworthy, unworshipful, cruel conceptions of God. I heard 
him say, humorously, once : "I do not know whether there 
is any God. I live in one of the rural districts of the uni- 
verse, and I do not know anything about it." But he frankly 
confesses that he can conceive of no God that satisfies either 
his brain or his heart. So there he is an agnostic. 

What about the future life? I must, whether there is 
time or not, read you one or two brief extracts indicating his 
ideas in regard to death ; for, leaving aside certainty of the 
future, I know of nothing more beautiful than are these ex- 
pressions of his. In a tribute to his own brother, he says : 
"Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of 
two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. 
We cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of our wail- 
ing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead 
there comes no word ; but in the night of death hope sees a 
star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing." 

Then, again, in his remarks at the grave of a child of a 
friend, he says, " We do not know whether the grave is the 
end of this life or the door of another, or whether the night 
here is not somewhere else a dawn." 



io8 



Signs of the Times 



Again, he says : " The idea of immortality, that, like a sea, 
has ebbed and flowed in the human heart, with its countless 
waves of hope and fear beating against the shores and rocks 
of time and fate, was not born of any book, nor of any creed, 
nor of any religion. It was born of human affection ; and 
it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds 
of doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of 
death. It is the rainbow, — Hope, shining upon the tears 
of grief." 

Short of knowledge of the future, I do not know of any- 
thing in literature more sweet and beautiful than words like 
these. He is an agnostic here, then, simply saying, " I do 
not know " ; expressing, however, his belief that, if there be 
any future, the only way to be ready for it is to live a noble, 
sweet, and true life here. 

What is his attitude in regard to the Bible ? According to 
popular opinion, he is spending a large part of his public 
life ridiculing the Bible. He has never uttered one single 
word of ridicule for the Bible itself ! He has only ridiculed 
certain unfounded conceptions of the Bible which he regarded 
as standing in the way of human freedom and the progress 
of human thought. 

What is his attitude towards Jesus ? He of course does 
not accept the theological Christ. But, had I time, I could 
read to you from this book a loving, tender, reverent, admir- 
ing tribute to the man Jesus of Nazareth, rejected, cast out, 
persecuted by the same kind of bigotry whose sting his own 
heart has felt. 

What else does he teach ? What is his positive teaching ? 
I do not know anywhere in the world grander and finer 
teaching concerning such great topics as human liberty, 
justice, patriotism, honesty, the character and possibilities 
of women, the beauty of home, than his. He does not wor- 



Ingersollism 



109 



ship, as he says ; but, when he talks about worship, what he 
means is that which I should repudiate myself. He does 
not believe in singing hymns to or uttering words of praise 
to an infinite being. He thinks it belittling to the concep- 
tion of God himself to suppose that he wants that kind of 
fulsome flattery. Again, had I time, I could read you glit- 
tering sentence after sentence on this very theme of worship, 
expressing what he means by it, — worshipping that which is 
beautiful, that which is true, that which is high, that which is 
noble in life, the consecration to duty in the midst of dark- 
ness, of difficulty, of sorrow. 

If we leave one side the question of God and the future, if 
we simply concern ourselves with this life here, then I hardly 
know of any man who has voiced its duties, who has 
expressed its poetry, who has appreciated its sublimity and 
faithfulness more thoroughly and more completely than he. 

I wish now to raise the question, which seems to me a 
perfectly legitimate one, What is the cause of a career like 
this of Mr. Ingersoll's ? What has thrown him into such 
extreme reaction ? I believe that he is a legitimate, nat- 
ural, necessary outcome of the time. He is a product, 
by repulsion, of that type of religion, of theology, which he 
has devoted his life to antagonizing so earnestly and so 
successfully. Given the teachings concerning God and man 
and destiny, given the old creeds, and given a man who 
thinks, and who has a heart to be touched, who has a sense 
of justice, who is brave enough to speak, and you have a 
man like Ingersoll, — the natural, necessary reaction from 
the old creed. And I am willing to put myself on record 
as saying this, and saying it with all the emphasis of which 
I am capable, — and you know I do not agree with Mr, 
Ingersoll concerning some of the points which I regard as 
of unspeakable importance; — must I choose between the 



I 10 



Signs of the Times 



conception of the world, of God, of man, of destiny, set forth 
in any of the authoritative creeds of the orthodox churches 
of to-day and the position of Colonel Ingersoll, I would take 
my place gladly, lovingly, tenderly, by his side, and await 
the outcome, whatever it might be. Rather than hold such 
a view of God, of his relation to his children, and of the 
future, as is set forth in the old creeds, oh, I would infinitely 
rather try to lighten human burdens for a little while here, 
lift off the weight from some heart that was crushed, wipe 
away a tear from some eye that was so blinded that it could 
not see the way, do some little thing to make the world 
better and brighter, and then sleep forever. I would thank 
God for the dust and the worm and the darkness and the 
utter silence infinitely more than I would thank him for his 
heaven, with me at his right hand, while away over yonder 
the smoke of "their torment ;; should "ascend forever and 
ever." 

At the risk of repeating what I may have given you before, 
and to show that I do not hold these ideas alone, let me 
read to you a few lines from Tennyson, of the Church of 
England, and one of the finest poets of the modern world. 
In his poem called " Despair/'" he sets forth the fact that a 
man and his wife, who had been attending one of the dis- 
senters' chapels in England, had come to doubt the kind of 
God and man and destiny there preached. Having lost 
faith in God and in the future, reaction sets in, and the man 
and his wife agree that they will get rid of their burden by 
committing suicide together. For that purpose they go 
down to the sea, and walk into the waves. The woman is 
drowned, but the husband is swept ashore, where he finds 
the minister of the little chapel bending over him ; and a 
part of the poem is devoted to conversation between them, 
and the man expresses his ideas and, of course, the idea of 



Ingersollism 



ill 



Tennyson, as is plain enough. You would think I were 
blaspheming, if I were not quoting: — 

What ! I should call on that Infinite Love that has served us so well ? 
Infinite cruelty, rather, that made everlasting Hell, 

Made us, foreknew us, foredoomed us, and does what he will with his 
own ; 

Better our dead brute mother who never has heard us groan ! 

Hell ? if the souls of men were immortal, as men have been told, 
The lecher would cleave to his lusts, and the miser would yearn for his 
gold, 

And so there were Hell forever ! but, were there a God as you say, 
His Love would have power over Hell till it utterly vanished away. 
Ah yet — I have had some glimmer, at times, in my gloomiest woe, 

Of a God behind all — after all — the great God for aught that I know ; 
But the God of Love and of Hell together — they cannot be thought, 
If there be such a God, may the Great God curse him and bring him to 
naught ! 

Blasphemy ! whose is the fault ? is it mine ? for why would you save 
A madman to vex you with wretched words, who is best in his grave ? 
Blasphemy ! ay, why not, being damned beyond hope of grace ? 
Oh, would I were yonder with her, and away from your faith and your 
face ! 

Blasphemy ! true ! I have scared you pale with my scandalous talk, 
But the blasphemy to my mind lies all in the way that you walk. 

So far Tennyson. And I utter again every word that he 
says. For, if I were compelled to choose between a life of 
human helpfulness here without God or hope, followed by an 
eternal sleep and the God of the old creeds, I would not 
hesitate long enough to give utterance to my eagerness in 
choosing the first ; and, if I have a friend on earth who 



112 



Signs of the Times 



would not choose to go with me on those conditions, I hope 
he will never tell me so, for I could not respect him so much 
afterwards. 

And now I wish to say a few words by way of criticism 
and to make a little more clear what I regard as the defects 
of Mr. IngersolPs position. His defects are almost entirely 
negative defects. I do not know one line, one word, one 
syllable, of positive teaching on the part of Ingersoll con- 
cerning any great question of secular interest that is not 
noble and fine and sweet and true, as healthy as the air and 
as fragrant as the lilies of the field. I do not know one 
word of positive teaching concerning our life here that he 
need wish to blot. 

And his home life is as sweet as a poem. Those who 
have had inside glimpses of his household have learned that, 
if nothing else is worshipped there, at least he himself is — 
by his wife and children. 

But it is said he has no reverence. Perhaps here it may 
be well to quote what he says of Voltaire : "In the presence 
of absurdity he laughed, and was called irreverent." The 
matter of reverence is a relative one. No man reverences 
those things that he regards as not worthy of it. And most 
certainly no man shows more reverence for all that is hu- 
manly worthy than does he. 

And is it not well for us now and then to recognize the 
fact that even the Bible itself, in its finest parts, puts human- 
ity first ? Jesus teaches that so long as we are out of right 
relation to our fellow-men we can offer no acceptable wor- 
ship to God. (See Matt. v. 23, 24.) 

And the prophet Micah puts the doing justly and the lov- 
ing mercy before the walking humbly with God. And John 
questions the sincerity of professed love to God where the 
love for the brother is not apparent. Charles Sumner used 



Ingersollism 



"3 



to say, speaking of the two great commandments (love to 
God and love to man), that he was afraid he did not know 
much about the first, but he tried to keep the second. 

But I said I was going to criticise. Let me come then to 
a few hints in that direction. I cannot regard Colonel In- 
gersoll's philosophy of the universe as a profound philoso- 
phy. I cannot think that he grasps it as completely as one 
might. I believe with my whole soul in God as the neces- 
sary key to the explanation of what is. I regard his philoso- 
phy of evil as not profound. For if there be God, purpose, 
outcome, then that evil which troubles the tender-hearted 
colonel becomes a shadow, a morning mist that flees away 
in the presence of the eternal sunrise. I cannot think his 
philosophy of human nature, this wonderful mystery of the 
human soul, to be profound or complete. He deals too 
much with the surface of things. I cannot think that he 
has estimated at their true worth the indicators that point, 
as it seems to me, with practical certainty towards the out- 
come over there beyond the shadow that shall redeem all 
the littleness, all the misery, all the pain, all the cruelty, 
all the darkness, of the past of human history. One more 
defect I wish to mention. I think that in his lectures and 
in his writings he makes the mistake of identifying relig- 
ion and theology, which is only the theory of religion. He 
finds the one so faulty and so easily overthrown that he 
seems to imagine that religion is only a passing phase of 
human life and is destined to vanish away. 

If now any one is anxious to take away the power and 
destroy the influence of men like Colonel Ingersoll, there 
is one sure way. Take away the false, the untenable, the 
absurd, the unjust, from the religious life of the time, and 
help build a religion that is reasonable, humane, tender, and 
true. True religion cannot be ridiculed, for it is not ridicu- 
lous. 



ii4 



Signs of the Times 



And now, at the close, I wish only to say that if the colo- 
nel is mistaken in his doubts as to a future life, I do not 
believe he will be sorry to confess his mistake. If I meet 
him over there, I believe that his true heart will respond to 
everything true. As he now admires that which is admi- 
rable, he will easily flame out into worship ; and he will be 
the readiest to confess the limitations of his thought here, 
and to go about fearlessly proclaiming the truth, earnestly 
trying to perform his duty, being faithful and true to friend- 
ship and to love as he is here below. 



RELIGOIUS REACTION. 



In any age when there is a forward movement, whether 
religious or otherwise, there will always be noted along with 
it signs and movements of reaction. Perhaps it is safe to 
say that the intensity of the one fairly gauges the intensity 
of the other. Yet, when the representatives of this forward 
movement note these signs of reaction, there is apt to be a 
feeling of discouragement, a questioning as to whether the 
progress that they believe in really exists, whether the world 
is moving forward as fast as might reasonably be expected. 
When we see intense activity on the part of the represen- 
tatives of the older types of thought, when we see a schol- 
arly and religious man like Dr. Huntington leaving the new 
movement and going back to the old, when we see a man 
like John Henry Newman, whose intellect and character 
command the reverence of the world, leaving the forward 
movement and going back to the old, it is not strange if 
people raise the question whether they are right. People 
say to me : Here is so and so, a good man, an earnest man, 
a seeker of the truth, a scholar, and he is going in precisely 
the opposite direction from what you are taking. I am ear- 
nest, I desire to know the way, but I am not a scholar : how 
shall I know which of you is right ? 

These signs and tendencies of religious reaction, then, 
need to be noted, to be understood, and to be assigned their 



n6 



Signs of the Times 



place, so that we may comprehend what they mean and not 
be overmuch disturbed by them. 

When the children of Israel went out of Egypt, the story 
tells us that they came in a short time to the borders of the 
land of promise. Here they paused for a little, and ap- 
pointed twelve trusty representatives, one from each tribe, to 
go over and investigate the country, to find out its condition, 
its desirability as a place of residence, and the difficulties in 
the way of conquest; and the story goes on to tell us that, 
in spite of the fact that they had the definite command of 
God to go forward without fear, that this was the country 
destined to be theirs, that they were not to be afraid of the 
stories of giants and of impregnable fortifications, still ten 
out of the twelve voted against that forward movement. 
There were only two of that high faith and trust that dared 
go forward. And I suppose it is true that the world never 
stood on the borders of any promised land but the majority 
voted, at first, at any rate, against the forward movement. 
The majority is never quite up to the highest, finest, and 
noblest things. 

When I was a boy, I lived on the banks of a beautiful 
river. I learned to love the river, and I learned to be famil- 
iar with its habits ; and I noted the fact that in the summer 
when the water was low, when the tide flowed on with a 
peaceful, gentle, almost sluggish, motion, the stream was 
always forward, or almost always. There was rarely an 
eddy, rarely a backward current, or, if there was any at all, 
it was so slight, it had so little force, that it could hardly 
float a chip upon its surface. But I noted another thing: 
in the spring-time, when the snows were melting up in the 
mountains towards the north, when the river swelled in its 
banks and there was a flood, when the tide was mighty and 
resistless in its force and in its forward motion, then the 



Religious Reaction 



117 



eddies, the backward currents, were quite as marked, quite 
as forceful. There was power enough in them sometimes to 
seize some great tree that was floating down the stream and 
sweep it for a time backward up the river. So I learned a 
lesson, — that the force of the eddy, the force of the back- 
water, is in correspondence with the force of the general cur- 
rent that sweeps onward towards the sea. 

I wish to call your attention now to a few illustrations of 
the fact that religious reaction always accompanies any great 
time of definite and distinct forward movement. Just at the 
time when Christianity was first becoming a force among the 
Hebrew people, there was also along with it the most intense 
devotion to the ritual, to the keeping of the old Mosaic order. 
There was an activity in the old religious life such as had 
hardly ever been seen in opposition to that which seemed to 
threaten its permanence and to all that promised a new 
and larger life for the world. And in the fourth century, 
after Christianity had conquered the Roman Empire, after 
Constantine had made it the religion of the court, the author- 
itative religion of the State, and it seemed supreme, there 
came, under the reign of Julian, one of his immediate suc- 
cessors, his nephew, a wide-spread revival of the old Pagan- 
ism such as the world had hardly seen for centuries. New 
temples were built, old temples were repaired. Altars were 
raised, sacrifices performed. The old rites and ceremonies 
took on the appearance of life such as they had rarely 
known. It seemed like the upflaring of a fire, more brill- 
iant than ever just before going out. 

When the Reformation came, wounding to the death as it 
did the Romish Church, in connection with that movement 
there was a grand revival of Romanism. There was a 
marshalling of its forces, a gathering of its powers to meet 
this threatened attack, so that Romanism never seemed 



ii8 



Signs of the Times 



more alive than it did in its opposition to the young Refor- 
mation. And when a few years ago at Oxford the "Essays 
and Reviews " were published, marking a sort of renaissance 
of liberal thought, a new birth of the brain and scholarship 
of England, there went along with it a movement that has 
taken the name of Dr. Pusey, and the time was marked by 
the reaction of John Henry Newman and some of the lead- 
ing minds of the English Church. At this point of time, 
when human thought was rousing itself to these new con- 
quests, just then these great lights and leaders went deliber- 
ately back and vowed their allegiance to the older faith. 

So to-day we find, on the one hand, the movement of relig- 
ious thought that promises emancipation to the world, that 
promises a new heaven and a new earth ; yet, on the other, we 
find books published and elaborate schemes of thought set 
forth for the older ideas. We find men on every hand turn- 
ing back to these, trying to prove that there is some way by 
which they may remain loyal to the old faith, in spite of the 
new light that is coming into the world. We find intense 
religious activities, popular revivalism, under marked and 
mighty leaders over the world, such as have rarely been 
seen. We find men leaving the older types of a severe Or- 
thodoxy because the doctrine hurts, laying the emphasis of 
their lives not on those doctrines, but going into some form 
of Episcopacy, some established Church, where they can lay 
the emphasis on the rites, on the ceremonies, where they can 
forget the doctrinal conditions, where they can lose them- 
selves in those charitable works that absorb so much of their 
time. 

In conversation with a clergyman of the Church of Eng- 
land last summer, I asked him about the tendency of the 
younger thinkers in the church ; and he said that many and 
many a man — and he spoke of it as quite a general move- 



Religious Reaction 



119 



ment — as the necessary and logical outcome would do one 
of two things. They would either stop thinking, because 
afraid to follow thought to its logical conclusion, and turn 
their attention to the work of practical charity and human 
service, or else they would take refuge in the High Church 
forms and rituals, where the emphasis could be placed on 
these things, and where they might escape from the struggle 
and conflict of the modern world. 

These are sufficient as illustrations of the tendency towards 
religious reaction. 

I wish now, if I can, to offer you, in a spirit of perfect 
fairness and kindness towards those with whom I am deal- 
ing, some suggestions as to causes. What is the reason for 
this religious reaction, this going back to the older thought 
and to what you and I are accustomed to think of as lower 
types of religious faith and practice ? 

I shall mention several causes, but I wish in the first place 
to call your attention to one of the fundamental principles of 
the philosophy of evolution. We are familiar with this gen- 
eral tendency of all things to grow and to lift, and this is 
what we mean by the doctrine of evolution. Things grow 
from low to high, from the simple to the complex, developing 
higher and higher. But yet the tendency to degenerate on 
the part of these types, these forms of life that are not so 
circumstanced as to make growth the natural and easy thing, 
is just as much a part of evolution as is the tendency to grow 
when all things favor development. So along with this 
growth of things there is perpetually to be witnessed the 
tendency towards what scientists call atavism, — that is, a 
reversion towards an older, lower form of the same thing, 
the same growth; something that had been passed by re- 
verted to again. 

W T e find the same tendency in the animal world. After 



120 



Signs of the Times 



the higher and finer species have been developed, there will 
be now and then a reversal of the process apparently, a 
falling back and down, a manifestation of some one of the 
lower forms and types of life. We find this to be a law : 
that the highest and finest and last development in any 
direction, vegetable, animal, human, is always of necessity 
the least fixed, the least stable, the first to feel the effect of 
any change of climate or condition. It is the last, highest, 
finest bud on the tree that is the most easily frost-nipped, if 
the weather changes or becomes unfavorable to its growth. 
The hardier and older parts of the tree can stand it. They 
are more fixed in their form. 

We find the same precisely in regard to men. This indi- 
vidual reason of ours by which we look over the facts of 
life and decide as to what we should do in a given set of 
circumstances is the last and highest development of the 
human mind. The instinctive life, the impulsive life, we all 
share with the animal world: this is the older, and conse- 
quently less easily disturbed. When a man is old, for ex- 
ample, you will find that he frequently becomes more con- 
servative. He falls back on to the lower, older life, — that 
which he inherited, that which he was accustomed to as a 
child. If a man becomes insane, it will be the highest and 
finest part of his brain that will go first. The lower, the in- 
stinctive, remains substantially the same. The automatic 
part of him is about as it was before. So in the presence of 
some great overmastering emotion. Let, for instance, a 
panic take a crowd, and the reasoning faculty, the highest 
and best part of the man, seems to be swept away; and 
suddenly he is an animal. He is simply carried away by 
impulse and passion and instinct. The reasoning faculty for 
the time is broken down ; and the lower, older part of his 
nature reasserts itself. 



Religious Reaction 



121 



So we find that it is not an uncommon thing for some great, 
distinguished leader, in the direction of the larger liberty of 
the world, in his old age to become false to the grandest 
things he ever said or did. Perhaps a man who has de- 
spised the charlatanry of the old priesthood in his old age 
becomes a child again, and feels too feeble to stand alone, 
and calls in the aid of the very priest whose work he at- 
tempted in his maturer time to overthrow; and the world 
has been troubled by it. And sometimes this has been used 
as a proof that the new thought was false and wrong, and 
could not endure the stress of the last and dying hour, when 
a man was facing the great facts of God and eternity. 
What it means, however, is simply that his physical weakness 
has brought about the decay, the disintegration, of the high- 
est and finest part of his life. There is a reversal, a falling 
back and down, upon the old, inherited, more stable part of 
his nature, that which has long endured. 

One of the finest touches of nature anywhere in Shak- 
spere that I am familiar with is that where some one, speak- 
ing of Falstaff when he is dying, says that he " babbles of 
green fields." His life as a courtier and soldier and man of 
the world was all gone. He was a child again for the time, 
because the highest and last added element of his life was 
undergoing a process of decay, and he was sinking back 
into his older and lower conditions. Here, then, is one 
reason that explains this religious reaction that we find con- 
nected with all epochs of the world's progress. 

Then there is another reason for turning back. It seems 
very strange to me, and yet I know it is true on every hand. 
People think that it is safe for the world to go as far as they 
themselves go, but they think that there is some hidden 
danger in taking a step beyond. They make themselves 
the measure of what is proper in the way of the world's 



122 



Signs of the Times 



advance. They seem to be afraid ; and I have no question 
that in most of the cases it is a genuine, earnest, noble 
anxiety that the essence of the religious life is in danger, 
if people go, as they say, too far. In many cases, it is a 
genuine desire to save that which they believe is precious 
to the world, and on which the world's life depends. Sup- 
pose — I think you will see the parallel — that a man had 
been born and had grown up in a room through which the 
light entered only by the medium of colored glass or some 
curiously constructed prism. Suppose he had never seen 
the outside world, but had learned to love the light, to think 
of it as coming from heaven, — a precious possession by 
means of which he could see his way, by means of which 
he could discern forms of beauty, by means of which he 
could look into the faces of those he loved, by means of 
which he could read and study. He had learned to think 
that light was a precious and blessed thing. If some one, 
then, should come along and propose to him to open the 
windows, to remove the glass, to take away the prism, he 
would undoubtedly be fearful that the light itself might be 
lost. He could not think of light as being safe in limitless 
space, of its being lighter still out of doors : so he might 
even fight against being released from this which was really 
a prison-house. 

Then, again, in other cases I have no doubt that the 
influence is of that sort which makes us love the old, love 
that to which we have been accustomed, to feel ill at ease 
anywhere else. It is not easy for a man to come out from 
the midst of the circumstances that have cradled him, to be 
flung over the edge of his nest, to try his new-found wings, 
to do it fearlessly and freely. The nest is softly lined, it 
is comfortable, it is home. There is no place to rest in the 
air: it is filled sometimes with rain and sleet and storm. 



Religious Reaction 



123 



No wonder that people love their nests ! To be released, 
to be driven out into this great, wide, wild universe, people 
feel as though they were lost. We know so very little, after 
all, we are overwhelmed with the sense of that which is un- 
known. We feel at home in these quieter, well-accustomed 
places. No matter what success a man may have had in his 
life, however beautiful his home may be, he will never cease 
to dream of the old home where father and mother were. 
There will seem an atmosphere about it that is lost to his 
later experience. This atmosphere remains, and touches 
his heart : it appeals to all that is tender and high and fine. 
I should not respect him if it were not so. But this same 
principle works in regard to all religious ideas. There is 
loss, and a definite loss — I feel it myself — in losing that 
intangible atmosphere of the religious life which I found in 
my childhood, with mother teaching me what she believed 
to be true. I would not for one instant go back ; but I can 
imagine cases where this loving longing for the old is so 
much stronger than the conviction of the necessity that 
drives one out, as Abraham went forth under the call of 
God, as to lead one to go back again for peace and for the 
sake of finding that older association. 

Then — you see how one of these causes springs out 
of another — people become tired of thinking. I have 
known many cases of persons who had started out bravely, 
convinced, as it appeared, of the truth of the new thought, 
the new ideas, but who became tired of wandering in this 
wide universe. They felt that they knew so little and that 
there was so much more that they did not know. 

Then it is one of the most difficult things in the world for 
people to rest in an unsettled state of mind. The very word 
" unsettled " contradicts the possibility of thought of rest. 
There are not many who can say, So much I know, but a 



124 



Signs of the Times 



million more things I do not know : I will hold my mind 
open concerning them. It is immensely difficult. Most 
people feel a necessity for their minds being made up in 
regard to everything; and it assures a sense of mental 
relief, of rest, to give up this weary struggle of thinking for 
one's self, of having opinions of one's own. I feel this 
myself at times. It is a relief to be able to go to a man 
of admitted authority, and take what he says about God and 
about the universe, and let it go at that. Sometimes it 
would be a relief to those who really think, who really 
believe, who really trust God, who really appreciate the 
grandeur of this spirit of truth-seeking, to give up the grand 
pain of thinking. And undoubtedly this does lead many a 
man towards religious reaction. 

Then there is one other motive, and one that is mighty 
and strong. It springs out of the very best thing in man. 
It is his self-distrust, his modesty. He sees the whole great 
world against him ; and the question sweeps over him — 
what wonder that it sometimes sweeps him off his feet or 
sweeps his breath away — whether there is not an immense 
egotism in clinging to the conviction, I am right, in the face 
of all the ages. Here is this grand consensus of the cen- 
turies : what if a man shrink from going out and saying, I 
am right, and yet I differ from all these ? It is magnificent 
when a man dares to say that " one with God is a majority " ; 
but suppose the question suggests itself to him whether it 
be not one without God, — then it is anything but a majority. 
And we must modestly confess that nine times out of ten, 
when a man starts out to lecture and teach the world, and 
he is alone and the world is all the other way, the world is 
right and he is wrong. It is well, indeed, that the world 
does not listen to all its would-be reformers. We have only 
to look over the surface of society to-day, and note how 



I 



Religions Reaction 125 

many reformers there are and how many of them would 
reform the world in entirely different directions, to appre- 
ciate the fact that, if the world were ready to listen to them 
all, the result would simply be universal chaos. The world 
is right not to listen too readily, and it is not strange if 
now and then a man questions seriously whether it is safe 
for him to go alone against the witness of the ages. Cardi- 
nal Newman somewhere in his famous book — I cannot 
quote the words — says, revealing the secret of his own 
movement in this direction, that at last he has come to 
a position where he feels safe. Undoubtedly, it was the 
testimony of the ages that convinced him against his own 
reason that the proper thing for him to do was to turn back 
from the sunlight and walk towards the older shadow. 

Then there is one more reason on which I must touch 
lightly. I do not want to lay much emphasis on it, though I 
have no doubt that it has weight with many. I do not want 
to emphasize it, because it is so unworthy that I do not like 
to believe that any large number of persons are influenced 
by it. This thing is self-interest. Take a man who belongs 
to the Established Church of England, and what does it 
mean ? It means millions of money ; it means social re- 
spectability ; it means heirship of the past ; it means the 
prestige of antiquity ; it means an opportunity for rising 
through the various grades to a position next to royalty 
itself. It means all these things in possibility. Think what 
that must be even as an unconscious bribe, how it must 
weigh with a man who is doubting, who is questioning as to 
which way lies the truth. 

I had a curious illustration of this idea, with a touch of the 
ludicrous connected with it, some years ago. A minister out 
West was talking about some questions of theology that were 
in the air, and he expressed himself as immensely interested ; 



126 



Signs of the Times 



and at last he said that he had no doubt that the new ideas 
were true, that he was convinced, and it seemed as though 
here was a very hopeful convert to the new ideas in the 
world. At last, he sat back in his chair, and said, " No, I 
must reconsider ; for, as a matter of fact, all my sermons — 
and I have all the work of years — have been written on the 
supposition that the other theory is true, and I cannot afford 
to throw away the work of a life to follow these new ideas." 
This simply as an illustration in one direction. These dif- 
ferent motives that come in must have weight in the scales 
of the man's intellect, and help to bear down the balance on. 
the wrong side. 

Now, at the last, I wish to turn back again to the hint 
with which I began, and to call your attention to the signifi- 
cance of these movements in the direction of religious re- 
action. 

What do they mean ? They mean that the world is mov- 
ing, that the current is setting strong towards the future ; and 
the power of the reaction, the force of the eddying tide, is a 
fair indication of the force and sweep of the onward move- 
ment. By as much, then, as you see these tendencies that 
indicate religious reaction, by so much you may be sure that 
religious change is in the air, and that the old is passing 
away. 

We should not, then, be discouraged if it seems to go 
slowly, if it does not come through channels where we ex- 
pect it to come. Still, let us be sure that it is coming, and 
that anything which is true has God back of it as the great 
force that is pushing it onward, and that, however slowly it 
may come, we need not be impatient, we need not fret. We 
should earnestly do our duty, standing in the place assigned 
us, believing that the right must win. 



Religious Reaction 



" Say not, the struggle nought availeth, 
The labor and the wounds are vain, 
The enemy faints not, nor faileth, 
And as things have been they remain. 

" If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars ; 
It may be, in yon smoke concealed, 
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers, 
And, but for you, possess the field. 

" For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, 
Seem here no painful inch to gain, 
Far back, through creeks and inlets making, 
Comes, silent, flooding in the main. 

" And not by eastern windows only, 

When daylight comes, comes in the light 
In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly, 
But westward, look, the land is bright." 



MIND CURE. 



That general movement which, under the name of Chris- 
tian Science, metaphysics, faith cure, prayer cure, or what- 
ever it may be called, is attracting so large an amount of 
attention, is certainly one of the marked signs of the times. 

If any one should question as to whether it is a fitting and 
appropriate theme for a Sunday morning sermon, I think 
he need only consider two facts. In the first place, this is 
not in the minds of many of its believers merely a method 
of curing the body : it is a method also for curing the sin and 
evil of the soul, so that it takes on the form of a religion to 
those who hold these features of the belief. 

On the other hand, whether we agree with them in this 
thought or not, we do know that the physical condition, 
health or disease, does itself stand in most intimate relation 
not only to physical comfort, but to mental, to moral, and to 
spiritual states. If I could make all the world well, I should 
abolish at one stroke not only pain, but most of the vice and 
the crime of the world besides. So, when we discuss ques- 
tions bearing upon the cure of even physical evils, we are 
dealing with those things that are interblended with all the 
problems of the moral and spiritual life. 

I do not feel certain this morning of more than one thing; 
and that is that in my treatment I shall thoroughly please 
very few people. I shall not please the extreme thinkers, 
probably, on either side. Whether I shall even succeed in 



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pleasing myself is an open question. But I shall try to deal 
with the matter as fairly, as simply, as briefly as I can, as 
it seems to me related to the deep-lying principles of human 
nature as they have been discovered by human experience. 

The movement started in its modern form in the year 1866, 
in Lynn. Mrs. Eddy claimed to have discovered the prin- 
ciple, although there were those who had written, thought, 
published, on the subject before.* She has set forth her 
theories and the claims which she has made on behalf of 
their practical working in many books and pamphlets which 
are open to the reading of all. Perhaps some of these are 
familiar to most of you. It is a distinctively idealist move- 
ment. The foremost advocates of the principle date it back 
even to the time of Plato, and his assertion that the real 
world was the world of ideas, and that that which we see, the 
phenomenal world, is only a sort of shadow or reflection of 
that. One of the prominent writers on the subject, and one 
of the most sensible, it seems to me, is Dr. W. F. Evans, 
author of " The Divine Law of Cure." I wish to read you 
just a word as setting forth what he regards as the basic 
principle of his teaching : — 

" The present volume is an attempt to construct a theo- 
retical and practical system of phrenopathy, or mental cure, 
on the basis of the idealistic philosophy of Berkeley, Fichte, 
Schelling, and Hegel. Its fundamental doctrine is that to 
think and to exist are one and the same, and that every dis- 
ease is the translation into a bodily expression of a fixed idea 
of the mind and a morbid way of thinking. If by any thera- 
peutic device you remove the morbid idea, which is the spir- 
itual image after the likeness of which the body is formed, 
you cure the malady." 

You see very plainly, then, the nature of the claims that 

*It seems probable that she borrowed it all from Dr. P. P. Quimby, of Belfast, Me. 



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are made. These, in the light of some of the claims put 
forth by Mrs. Eddy, seem very calm and wise. 

I wish to outline for you, briefly, the theory of the uni- 
verse as held by the author, teacher, and apostle of what 
is called Christian Science. Christian Science, by the way, 
seems to me a curious misnomer; for, after all the study 
that I have been able to give to it, I can find in it neither 
science nor Christianity. 

She claims that mind is the only real thing, and that there 
is only one mind, which is God. All this external world, in- 
cluding our bodies, are only thoughts, beliefs, shadows, 
hardly more real than the fancies of a dream. This one per- 
fect mind, of course, can never be sick. Sickness, then, is 
only a belief, a fancy, of what she calls mortal mind ; for 
the immortal, the one great mind, of course, is never de- 
luded. But these limited mortal minds dream or fancy the 
existence of disease and pain. They are not real ; and if 
you can persuade people that they are not real, that they 
are only fancies, then they quickly cease the kind of exist- 
ence which might be asserted of them before, and pass away 
like shadows when the sun is up. Mrs. Eddy claims that in 
accordance with this she cures all kinds and classes of dis- 
eases. I think she carries the matter so far as to say that 
death itself is only a blunder that need not exist. When 
considering a theory of the universe like this, I feel like quot- 
ing a couplet from Byron that he wrote as a satire on the 
extreme idealism of Bishop Berkeley : — 

" When Bishop Berkeley says there is no matter, 
It is no matter what he says." 

So, if we had only this philosophy of Mrs. Eddy's to deal 
with, it would really not be worth while talking about on the 
part of sane or rational people. But we must remember one 



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thing. When you have demolished a philosophy, a theory, 
you have not thereby demolished facts, if facts there are 
which are connected with that theory. A farmer, for ex- 
ample, may, during a certain season, raise a very large and 
fine crop of potatoes ; but if you ask him for his theory of 
sunshine, and of the laws of growth by which he has pro- 
duced these results, his answer might be the most arrant 
nonsense ; but the crop is there. So any man may produce 
a definite and distinct result and yet give you a very foolish 
account as to how it was done. We must, then, separate 
certain facts that are palpably undeniable from the foolish- 
ness of the theories which have been connected with them. 

It would not be fair to the representatives of mind cure to 
leave this description of the beliefs of Mrs. Eddy as an 
accurate representation of them. During the last week I 
had a long and careful conversation, with this sermon in view, 
with one of the best and most rational representatives of the 
mind cure ; and I assure you that the conversation was in 
almost every respect extremely satisfactory. She repudiates 
entirely these foolish and fanciful notions as to there being 
no such thing as matter, as to there being no such thing as 
disease or pain. She freely and frankly admits the ex- 
istence of all these ; and yet she makes the magnificent 
claim that, though these exist, mind 'is king, — king ever of 
the body, king of these physical conditions, above all health 
and all disease, and that the mind has power to cut off the 
supply of these morbid conditions, and to rally and call back 
the healthful forces of the system, and so dominate and rule 
all this kingdom of the physical. This I say without indors- 
ing or contradicting the claim that she makes. 

I wish now, after having set forth thus simply the claims 
of some persons representing this modern movement, to rec- 
ognize a few facts. I have no sort of question that the 



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followers of Mrs. Eddy have " cured " large numbers of dis- 
eases, that Mrs. Eddy may herself have cured them. I 
have no sort of question that diseases have been cured by 
the believers in faith cure, in prayer cure, in every different 
phase of this theory that you can imagine. But we cannot 
stop here. We must recognize that cures have been effected 
by the agency apparently of all sorts of things. You are 
aware that for ages it was believed that the touch of a king 
or queen of England had power to cure scrofulous disease, 
so that scrofula was called the King's Evil. I have no sort 
of doubt that under certain circumstances real cures have 
been effected by the touch of a king. I have no sort of 
question that cures recognized by his followers as miracu- 
lous, recognized by us as perfectly natural, were made by 
Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet. There are perfectly 
authentic cases on record of his having wrought most won- 
derful results by his touch or by prayer over those who were 
sick. When I was in California, a man visited the place 
where I was living, who claimed to be able to cure all dis- 
ease by the laying on of hands. I know that people did 
go to him on their crutches, and came away with their 
crutches under their arms or over their shoulders. I have 
no question as to facts like these. 

Not only that : miracles such as are reported from the Mid- 
dle Ages are being wrought to-day under the power of faith 
by those who are devout believers in the different religious 
systems of the world. Many and many a person has been 
cured by the use of the water of Lourdes. There is one 
authentic case on record where a devout believer came to 
a regular practising physician, who had recently received a 
little phial of water from the fountain of Lourdes, that had 
been brought to him by a friend, as a curiosity. Thfs woman 
came to the physician suffering from a serious malady, as 



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133 



she supposed ; and she said, If I were only able to go to 
Lourdes, I feel sure that my disease might be taken away, 
that the blessed Virgin would hear my prayers. The doctor 
thought he would try an experiment, and he told her that he 
had some water from Lourdes, and he would let her try it, 
and very likely it would produce the result that she ex- 
pected. But he could not find the bottle ; and, not wishing 
to disappoint her, he took another phial and filled it with 
water from the faucet, labelled it, and gave it to her. And 
within a week she was well, believing that it was by the 
favor of the Virgin that the wonderful result had been 
brought about. 

There have been cases where persons have been cured by 
the touch of sacred relics ; and, in some instances, it has 
been found — after the result had been reached — that the 
real relics had been lost, and replaced by bones of a much 
lower degree of sacredness. 

There is another instance that I have in mind, and there 
is no sort of question about it. A physician had a patient 
who was troubled, as he supposed, by a very serious disease 
of the throat. The physician inserted an instrument — I 
believe some kind of a thermometer — by which to test the 
temperature of the throat. He found out that the patient 
supposed that the doctor was administering some sort of 
treatment. He let the patient go on with that impression ; 
and, in a very short time, he cured the disease completely 
with nothing but the thermometer. These cases are on 
record by the hundred, and they ought not to surprise or 
astonish us. They are perfectly in line with what we know 
of the power the mind has over the body ; for the real agent 
of cure in all these cases is not the prayer, not the relic, 
not the thermometer, not the water of Lourdes, genuine or 
spurious, but the mental power of the patient. 



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And who shall limit this power? You are familiar with 
its manifestation in a hundred different directions. A word 
is whispered in some one's ear, and the face suddenly 
blushes and is suffused with red. What does it mean ? It 
means that a thought, a feeling, has power to stimulate the 
action of the heart, and send the blood to the cheeks. An- 
other word is whispered, and the cheek blanches and is pale. 
What does that mean ? It means, again, that a thought, a 
feeling, has had the power to send the blood back towards 
the centre, leaving the extremities pale and chilled. A word 
has power to stretch one fainting at your feet, has power to 
rouse another who is almost gone, and make him leap to his 
feet strong and thrilling with life again. What limit is there 
to this power of the mind over its kingdom, the body ? 
Whether it can cure or not, we know that it can kill. 

I wish to give you here one or two illustrations not fanci- 
ful, but authentic. They are on the records of the medical 
experience of the world. 

Some years ago, in France, certain criminals had been 
condemned to death. The physicians were allowed to try 
some experiments with them, to see the power the mind had 
over the body. They took two or three of them, and told 
them that they had been permitted to put them to death 
without pain ; that they would simply let them bleed to 
death. They blindfolded the men, laid them on surgical 
tables, telling them they would open a vein in their necks. 
Thereupon, they simply pricked the skin, — not enough to 
draw blood, — and had warm water so arranged that it would 
fall on their throats and trickle into a basin prepared to 
receive it ; and the men thought they were bleeding to 
death, and they actually died under the operation. 

Another test was of a like kind, also on criminals, with 
whom the physicians were allowed to experiment. They 



Mind Cure 



135 



told the criminals that they were going to put them into 
beds from which certain cholera patients had been removed, 
and that they would probably take the cholera. They put 
them into perfectly fresh beds, but warm and tumbled, look- 
ing as though some one had just left them ; and a large pro- 
portion of the men actually died with the cholera. These 
are perfectly authentic cases, illustrating in the most re- 
markable way what this power of the mind may be in cer- 
tain instances when it is exercised upon the body. 

I wish to give you now a few illustrations in another 
direction, showing you what tremendous medical resources 
there are here when they are properly explored and the laws 
that govern them are understood. 

I have studied practically the working of hypnotism upon 
its subjects. Hypnotism is the modern name for what used 
to be called mesmerism. It was scouted by the old physi- 
cians, condemned by a scientific commission in France; 
and yet it is now recognized by every competent investigator, 
and is being put to medical use by some of the most intel- 
ligent physicians of the world. The point is here. It is 
supposed that the power at work is the mind of the subject, 
and that the operator, instead of exercising some marvellous 
control over his subject, simply suggests to him certain 
things after he has put him into this hypnotic sleep. 

What is the limit of the power that can be exercised 
under this condition? It is apparently unlimited. I have 
seen almost every physical sense perfectly controlled. The 
operator suggests that the subject cannot see, and he is 
blind. He tells him that the only sounds he can hear are 
his own voice and the ticking of the clock ; and you may 
shout into his ear, you may make any noise you please, and 
he is as insensible as a marble statue. I have seen a person 
sniff ammonia with the greatest delight, because he had 



136 



Signs of the Times 



been told that it was cologne, without its producing any of 
the ordinary effects of ammonia. I have seen a person 
holding a little pure water in a glass, when told it was am- 
monia and compelled to smell it, have the tears run down 
his face, — the natural effect of ammonia. I have seen a 
person, with a little glass of pure water, thrown into a per- 
fect ether sleep because he was told that it was ether. I 
have seen a person who was told that his left side was para- 
lyzed ; and I have run a pin into the back of his hand till 
the blood followed it, and he took no more notice of it 
than if I had run it into the cushion of his chair. The 
moment after, when he was told that feeling had returned, 
he was as sensitive as before. All of the physical senses 
seem to be under the unlimited control of the mind under 
certain circumstances and conditions. 

This has been recognized by the scientific men of the 
world. It is being used in France and Belgium and in 
some cases in this country as one of the mightiest medical 
forces. There are cases on record of persons completely 
cured of their love of alcohol by it. They have been put 
into this hypnotic sleep day after day or two or three times 
a week for a time, and it has been impressed on their minds 
that they were not to like the taste of alcoholic drink ; and 
the result of it has been a natural aversion to everything of 
the kind. Not only this, but people have been cured of 
moral taints and vices by this process. 

I might go on here all the morning telling you cases of 
cures that I have known. I must hint one or two to show 
you that the theory, whether it be mind cure, Christian Sci- 
ence, faith cure, belief in the pope or Joe Smith, has appar- 
ently nothing to do with it. It only means that you shall 
believe in the possibility of it, — believe that the thing is 
going to be done. This seems to be the one grand requisite. 



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137 



Or, in some cases, there may be no belief about it at all, but 
only some fresh impulse, something that shall rouse the life 
force into renewed action. 

One of the leading physicians of this city told me in con- 
versation one day that his life was saved by his being made 
terribly angry. He was a surgeon in the army ; and he had 
typhoid fever, and had passed the crisis and was sinking 
gradually away. In a few hours he would undoubtedly have 
died. There was a surgeon of a neighboring regiment, whom 
he very much disliked, who came walking through the ward, 
making supercilious remarks, till he stood by the cot on 
which the sick doctor lay ; and in a very flippant fashion he 
said that probably it would all be over with him very soon. 
This sort of comment, by this sort of a man, roused his 
whole nature, till he rose up with what strength he had, and 
in no very polite language told him that he would live to 
see the grass green over his grave yet. It only needed this 
impulse for the life force to rally; and from that moment 
he began to recover, and is as strong as any man in the 
city to-day. This means simply that there needs something 
to thrill the life forces to renewed activity. 

I knew a case when I was a boy, in my old home, of a 
woman bed-ridden for eight years. A man fell in love with 
her, and induced her to be married. She got up and went 
to housekeeping, had a large family, and was well for many 
years. 

I know of a man who had not walked for years who was 
carried abroad in a wheeled chair, to see what travel could 
do for him. He had on one occasion been taken on board 
one of the steamers on one of the Swiss lakes, and left by 
his attendant. As he was sitting there, a cry of fire was 
raised. He leaped from his chair and rushed on shore, 
forgetting that he was lame under this impulse to escape 
from danger. 



138 



Signs of the Times 



What does this mean ? It means that it is the mind of the 
person himself that is chiefly concerned, and that it only 
needs, no matter what the influence may be, some power to 
give this person confidence, some power to rouse the life force, 
some power to make one feel that he can, and then the slug- 
gish material forces obey the mind that is king. 

Now, what is to be the upshot of this movement ? I be- 
lieve that, as the years go by, the extravagant, extreme 
claims on the part of those who advocate mind cure will be 
gradually outgrown. And I believe this also : that the real 
power which is here is to be recognized hereafter more and 
more, that it is to be recognized by the regular practitioner, 
that it is to become a part of the scientific treatment of dis- 
ease. Every one who studies the matter knows that the 
wisest and best doctors are using less and less medicine 
every year, — medicine in the old sense of drugs. Doctor 
Oliver Wendell Holmes said — I can repeat it without any 
danger of hurting the drug business, because, whether true 
or not, the world will go on after about the same fashion for 
some time to come — that, if all the drugs were cast into the 
sea, the probable result would be that it would be so much 
the better for men, and so much the worse for the fishes. 

This is, undoubtedly, an extreme statement, made for 
effect. But, as indicating the tendency of the regular prac- 
tice, I would like to tell you that some years ago I was the 
guest of the Massachusetts Medical Society at its annual 
dinner in Music Hall. I sat at the left hand of Surgeon- 
General Dale, a familiar name in Massachusetts and in other 
parts of the country. In the course of conversation, he said : 
The first, the principal thing is that you shall have perfect 
faith in your physician. Then, if he doesn't give you too 
much medicine, you will be likely to get along all right. 
Every physician knows that his case is half won if he can 



Mind Cure 



139 



carry faith into the homes of his patients. And the one 
thing he dreads more than anything else is gloomy, de- 
spondent, discouraging surroundings on the part of nurses 
and attendants. 

When some morbid condition is set up in the system, it 
becomes a battle between the natural force of health and 
this morbid force of disease ; and if the physical condi- 
tion is adequate to it, in almost all cases, whether you have a 
physician or do not have one, the life force — that is, the 
majority force — in the system will prevail, and the patient 
will get well. 

This is nothing against physicians. If I were ill, I should 
send for a physician the very first thing possible, as I would 
turn my watch over to the watchmaker if it needed repairs. 
Whether he give me medicine or not, if he is a wise man 
he will know what the difficulty is, and will give me, perhaps, 
what is better than medicine, — advice. It is the fault of the 
people if they are drugged. Ninety-nine times in a hundred, 
if you should call in a wise physician, if he were to give you 
only advice, though that were all you needed, you would not 
take it : you would send for another physician, that he might 
give you drugs. I have known any number of physicians 
who have given liniment, when they said the only thing the 
patient needed was friction ; but they knew the patient would 
not rub the part unless something were given to rub in. I 
have heard a physician say that he gave pills that had noth- 
ing in them relating to the disease, because he wanted the 
person to have confidence that he was doing something for 
him, otherwise he would send for some other physician. 

As fast as the people become wise enough to co-operate 
with the physician, they will come to recognize more and 
more these divine laws of cure, and will help on the better 
days when there shall be less of disease, because there is 



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Signs of the Times 



less of morbid mental condition out of which so large a part 
of the disease of the world has sprung. 

I wish now to close by hinting two or three points briefly, 
as indicating what this sign of the times signifies. 

In the first place, it means the growing belief of thousands 
of people that mind is really king. It means a tremendous, 
world-wide reaction against the old materialism. It has 
some of the violence, some of the extravagance of reaction, 
and no wonder. We have been told by wise men for a good 
many years that there was nothing in the world but matter, 
and that the soul was merely the product of matter, and its 
plaything. What wonder that the soul should assert itself 
at last, even to the point of declaring that there was nothing 
else in existence but soul, and that this boastful matter was 
only the shadow and the plaything of the mind ? It means a 
reaction, and I believe a healthy reaction, against the ex- 
tremes of the old materialism. 

For consider how the mind, how thought, has proved itself 
king of this old planet. Picture to yourself this world two 
hundred thousand years ago, and then picture it to-day ; and 
what is the difference ? Only the difference wrought by 
thinking; that is, the power of mind to sculpture and re- 
create the world. And the mind has no less power over 
this physical system of ours that we call the body. You 
know perfectly well, you recognize it in all experience, that 
the mind sculptures the face. After years have gone by, you 
say that a man has a wolfish, a foxy, or a bearish look; that 
is, this or that quality is sculptured on his face. What sculpt- 
ured it there ? Thoughts and feelings. It is merely the 
mind manifesting itself on the countenance ; and the mind, 
I believe, has power not only on the face, but from head 
to foot to mould and shape our physical condition. 

And here is the point we must never forget : the mind 



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141 



is king, but mind has a kingdom. If you are to destroy 
the real existence of the world and body and of matter of 
every kind, then mind is alone in space in the midst of a 
dream, surrounded by nothing but flitting shadows and 
fancies. But mind is mighty over real things, — over the 
real earth and the real body. 

And we must not forget that all that the mind has done in 
reshaping this old earth of ours has been done in accord- 
ance with the divine laws. Then recognize this force as 
real ; but recognize the laws as real. All has been accom- 
plished in accordance with facts, with laws, and by obedi- 
ence to laws ; that is, obedience to God. And all that can 
be done by the mind in curing, in lifting, in reconstructing, 
in saving the body, must be done by recognizing the real 
facts and forces of this physical system of ours, and by 
studying them even more attentively. Mrs. Eddy would dis- 
countenance the whole business of even raising the question 
as to whether you were sick or what is the matter with you. 
But, if the mind is to have power over the body to heal 
and save it, we must recognize the reality of its forces, dis- 
cover the laws of physical action in the physical frame, and 
must achieve these grand results by obeying carefully these 
laws. But I believe that the mind has power such as we are 
only beginning to dream of as yet. And by and by, when 
the soul, linked with God in love to him, in obedience to 
him, shall have asserted itself in fitting and blessed results, 
then that day shall come when the inhabitants of the earth 
shall no more say, I am sick, and there shall be no more 
pain, because the former things are passed away. 



SPIRITUALISM. 



This is Easter morning. The story has come down to 
us from the past that eighteen hundred and fifty-six years 
ago, at about the rising of the sun, certain of the loving 
friends of Jesus sought the tomb where they had laid him, 
and found it empty. And I suppose that the vast majority 
of people in Christendom, not having studied the subject 
very widely, hold the opinion that that was the first Easter 
morning of the world; that Easter is Christian, and only 
Christian, in origin and significance. I have had the ques- 
tion asked me a great many times as to why, not believing in 
the physical resurrection of Jesus, I celebrate Easter at all. 
The question betrays ignorance of the fact that the Easter 
day and the Easter hope are older than Christianity, older 
perhaps than any scripture, older than any organized religion 
of the world. For this hope that 

" Life is ever Lord of Death, 
And Love can never lose its own," 

is older than any religion. It is a flower born of human 
love, and watered by the tears that have been shed on the 
white faces of the dead. 

Easter, then, is human, a human hope ; and all the chil- 
dren of the one Father have an equal right to whatever sun- 
shine and consolation may gather about it. 

A belief that has come to be practically a religion to mill- 
ions of people in the most civilized countries of the world 



Spiritualism 



143 



may rightly claim at least, whatever else may be said about 
it, to be regarded as one of the " Signs of the Times." And 
this belief is not held by the superstitious, by the ignorant, 
by the vicious, by the socially reprobated alone. Nor does 
it find a home among these. For better or worse, it is 
shared by lawyers, by doctors, by ministers, by philosophers, 
by men of science, by men in every occupation, in every 
rank of life. There are believers among the social outcasts 
of the world, there are believers on thrones, there are be- 
lievers in palaces, believers among the nobility of every 
country, believers among diplomats, those engaged in the 
public service of their respective States. So that for better or 
worse, as I say, we find this permeating all modern society, 
in the high places and in the low. And it seems to me sig- 
nificant of one of two things. It is either one of the most 
hopeful or one of the most lamentable things in all the 
world. If it be true, then the fact that so many in all walks 
and ranges of life have accepted it contradicts neither the 
brain nor the culture of its adherents. If it be only delusion, 
contemptible, pitiful, superstition and fraud foisted upon so 
many, then it seems to me one of the saddest commentaries 
on what we dare to call the civilization of the nineteenth 
century that here at a time when we had dared to think that 
the world was coming to be fairly intelligent it is overrun, 
fairly swamped, with what so many are disposed to regard 
as merely a survival of old barbaric superstitions. 

It seems to me, then, that it is worthy of our careful, ear- 
nest, candid attention. If it is true, we certainly want to 
know it. If it is false, we want to know it, not only for our 
own sake, but for the sake of helping so many thousands 
of people out of a pitiable delusion. Liberals, at any rate, 
at the first blush, ought to be touched with a little feeling 
of sympathy towards it ; for, whatever else it may be, it has 



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Signs of the Times 



proved itself the most remarkable, the most wide-spread, 
the most effective solvent of the old dogmas that the world 
has ever known. Educated people, those who have time for 
critical thought and study, can be touched and influenced by- 
criticism, by philosophy, by science ; but here is a power that 
has come to work through the affections as well as through 
the intellects of men, and at whose touch the hideous and 
horrible dogmas of the past have faded away, to give place, 
at least in other respects, to what are rational and humane 
ideas concerning our Father in heaven and the destiny of 
his children. 

When, however, an earnest, candid person wakes up to the 
fact that such a thing as Spiritualism exists, and proposes to 
study it, the chances are, unless he is more fortunate than 
the ordinary seeker, that he will find himself face to face 
with that which will repel him, will shock him, will disgust 
him on every hand ; for, whether there be anything true in it 
or not, there is no sort of question that there does exist in 
connection with it and under cover of its name an amount 
of palpable and intentional fraud that is simply appalling. 
There is no question that there is connected with it and 
under cover of its name also a vast amount of honest 
and ignorant self-delusion. Certain strange things happen, 
and people at once fly to the spiritualistic interpretation of 
them, although to a more careful and conservative thinker 
there may be no necessity whatever for any such explana- 
tion. There is, then, this amount of fraud and delusion 
which repels one who proposes to investigate for himself, 
and find out what is true. Words of too severe reprobation 
cannot be uttered for this side of the movement. But it 
ought to be said in justice that the honest and earnest be- 
liever deplores this state of things as much as anybody, and 
ought not to be held responsible ; but the whip of public 



Spiritualism 



145 



scorn and disapprobation should be applied to the multitude 
of impudent and deliberate cheats, tricksters, and liars, till 
they are whipped out of all decent human society. There 
are those that trade like human ghouls in the bodies of the 
dead. This business seems to me in all ways to be respect- 
able compared with that of trading in human tears, in 
human heart-break, in the tenderest and highest hopes of the 
human soul. I know of nothing more utterly despicable, 
more utterly inhuman, than this manifestation of a willing- 
ness to make money out of the sacred hopes and fears of 
those who are heart-broken and desolate. 

There is also connected with the movement, as is charged, 
a vast amount of immorality of every kind. I have no sort 
of question that this charge is true. One thing, however, — 
I will not dwell upon it, — ought to be hinted as an explana- 
tion of it, as an apology for this condition of things. Always 
in the history of the world, when there has been a general, 
wide-spread breaking up of an old system of thought, when 
people are feeling about for an attempted readjustment with 
the new system, there has been this loss of a firm grip on the 
deep realities, the ethical principles of human nature. Peo- 
ple have lost their old motives and have not found the new. 
It was true concerning early Christianity. There has not 
been one single charge made against Spiritualism that was 
not made by pagan onlookers and observers as to young Chris- 
tianity. It was said that their love-feasts were only drunken 
and dissipated orgies. And Paul tells us himself that on a 
certain occasion, in the church of Corinth, the people were 
drunken at the communion table ; so that we must remember 
that, though these things are true, it is not the first time in 
the history of the world that men have passed through a 
similar phase of experience. 

And while people still link themselves with the churches 



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for the sake of social standing or financial gain, though they 
do not believe its doctrines nor care for its spiritual pros- 
perity, even modern Christianity cannot very safely throw 
stones. 

I wish now to say that any critic who proposes to con- 
sider any great movement of human life or thought is in duty 
bound, as a fair and honest man, to judge it from its best 
side, to judge it at its highest. 

Let us, then, consider the fact that, in spite of all I have 
said, there is what I may perhaps properly call a Higher 
Spiritualism, a complete system of thought, of life, of ethics, 
of belief concerning God and man and destiny that is clearly 
wrought out. There is a vast literature that has appeared, 
in the last few years, setting forth belief in all these phases 
of opinion ; and, if any one wishes to know what it means, 
or what it claims to stand for on its higher side, he ought in 
fairness to make himself familiar with the best of its litera- 
ture. 

I propose to define this higher Spiritualism, not to give 
you my opinion of it, but to tell you what it claims for itself, 
what it aims to be. 

What is, then, the first grand belief ? Simply that death is 
not an end ; that it is merely an experience, an incident in 
the onward and upward struggle and progress of the individ- 
ual life. It claims to have demonstrated this, to hold it not 
as a hope, not as a belief, but as knowledge. It teaches 
that inside these gross physical bodies there is an ether 
body, that has grown with it, been shaped by it, adapted 
to it, perfect in every part and faculty ; and that this ether 
body is disengaged at death, like a germ delivered from its 
sheath, and that it goes on, the soul taking this ether body 
with it as a perfect equipment in every faculty for the fullest 
expression of its higher and better life. According to this 



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147 



teaching, the soul simply goes on with its power to think, to 
remember, to love just as of old. 

It further teaches that this universe everywhere is under 
the law of cause and effect, and that we begin life hereafter 
just as we leave it here, precisely what we have made our- 
selves by our thoughts, our deeds, our words on earth. 
Therefore, this other life is not peopled with ghosts, with 
ghastly, thin and unreal beings, such as we have imagined 
in the past : they are real folks, our fathers, our mothers, 
our neighbors, our friends, just as we have known them 
here, only released from these lower physical conditions, but 
carrying with them the same kind of character, of thought, 
of personality which they had here. 

It also teaches that, under certain peculiar conditions, 
there can now and then be manifestations of the reality of 
that life to this life ; that sometimes there comes a whisper, 
sometimes a hand is reached across the abyss, and that they 
are demonstration of the fact that those we have loved and 
that we talk of as lost are not lost, but are living as we are 
living. 

This higher Spiritualism is in perfect accord with all the 
best scientific teaching of the world. It is in perfect accord 
with the finest and highest philosophy of the world. It is in 
perfect accord with the finest and highest moral principles 
that have ever been discovered. So there is nothing that we 
know that is contradictory to these claims of this higher Spir- 
itualism. Therefore, whether it can demonstrate itself as 
true or not, it is not in contradiction with any known truth 
that science or philosophy has to offer, and is in perfect ac- 
cord with the finest ethical teaching and the highest hopes of 
man. So much must be said in defence of this claim of what 
I have called the higher Spiritualism. 

Now, I wish to offer a few suggestions of which you will 



Signs of the Times 



see the force and drift. I speak not now as a Spiritualist. 
I am speaking, or trying to, as a perfectly fair and sympa- 
thetic critic from the outside. These claimed facts which 
Spiritualists offer us as proof of that which they declare to 
be true are not new facts. What is called modern Spiritual- 
ism itself is less than half a century old, but these general 
manifestations of a certain class and kind of facts have been 
reported down from the very dawn of human history. In 
the household of old Dr. Phelps, of Connecticut, father of 
Professor Phelps, of Andover, there were unquestionably 
certain manifestations of abnormal power that have never 
yet found any explanation, unless indeed they can find it 
here. In the home of the Wesleys there were similar man- 
ifestations continued for a long period. From almost every 
nation, every religion, every age, there come to us these 
stories of abnormal, unusual occurrences ; things that usually 
the people have called miracles, that they were not able to 
explain. Now here is the point that I wish to emphasize. 
Are these stories, hundreds of them, told by the gravest and 
most reliable writers and historians of the world, — are they 
true ? They certainly are not conscious falsehoods. Do 
they mean that the people who reported these things in all 
ages were so little to be relied on that they should be con- 
stantly liable to this sort of delusion from the beginning of 
the world until now ? I simply wish to say this : if I may 
believe in the central thought of modern Spiritualism, that 
fact would run a line of light, a line of sanity, back up the 
ages through every religion, through every nation, through 
every tribe, and would give me an added respect for the 
ability of the average man to observe and tell the truth. It 
would explain a thousand things that now are inexplicable. 
It would explain not only the Bible, but the Scriptures of 
all ages, and the writings of grave old Roman writers, like 



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Livy, and almost all writers of ancient times. Brush them 
one side, and put them down with scorn to the credulity of 
man, and we must believe, what I do not like to believe, that 
men have been too credulous in all these ages. To believe 
that there was a kernel of truth in their reports would give 
an added respect for human nature. 

Here also might be found a rational explanation of the 
ancient oracles, and of such claims as that made by Soc- 
rates concerning the daimon that was his constant attendant 
and teacher. 

Then what a light it would throw upon the whole Bible ! 
For the Bible looked at from the stand-point of the rational- 
ist is nothing but a spiritualistic book from beginning to 
end. Its entire significance is in its Spiritualism. It is full 
to running over with it from one cover to the other. Must 
we put everything there down to the wildest kind of delu- 
sion ? Must we not, unless there is some ground for these 
beliefs ? I would like to believe something a little more to 
the credit of these reporters. 

Let me indicate to you one kind of influence it would have 
on my thinking. I do not believe at all in the physical res- 
urrection of Jesus of Nazareth. On the testimony contained 
in the New Testament, I see little cause for believing even 
in his spiritual reappearance. The testimony of the New 
Testament concerning the resurrection of Jesus, if it were 
paralleled by testimony in a court of justice, would not be 
accepted, for it is simply the anonymous testimony of people 
whom we cannot cross-examine as to certain very strange 
and wonderful things that happened nearly two thousand 
years ago. One of the strangest things to me is to find peo- 
ple who believe in these stories told in the New Testament, 
but who do not believe the modern ones. For the modern 
ones are of precisely the same kind, and have this advantage 



Signs of the Times 



over the old : that they have the living testimony of hun- 
dreds and thousands of credible men and women, while 
the old stories are no more credible on their own account 
than the modern ones, and have no evidence that would be 
allowed if it were standing simply alone. 

In view — and here is what I have in mind — in view of 
this, if I may be permitted to believe in the visible spirit 
appearance of any modern man who has died, why then it 
would be perfectly easy and rational for me to believe that 
Paul saw Jesus on the way to Damascus. It would not seem 
a supernatural fact, but a perfectly natural occurrence. 

And here let me remove one common prejudice. Spirit- 
ualism makes no demand on us that we believe the super- 
natural. At most, it is only a question of words. A spiritual 
world, if it exists, is as natural as the physical world. All 
the mightiest forces are invisible, but not therefore super- 
natural. 

I want to mention to you, also, a thought which strikes me 
as being of a great deal of importance, as springing out of 
the doctrine of evolution, as to these modern wonders; for 
evolution reaches from the beginning to the end, and there 
is no sort of reason to suppose that its force is spent, but 
every reason to suppose the contrary. Note one thing of 
vast significance. The lowest forms of life, worms and 
fishes, occupy a horizontal position. They have very little 
development of brain, very simple nervous systems. The 
force of evolution has tended ever to lift from the horizontal 
plane up through higher forms of life, reptile, bird, mammal, 
till you have man perpendicular, standing on his feet, with 
immense development of brain and nervous power. Does 
evolution stop there ? No, it has left the physical, ages ago. 
It is not producing marked changes in the structure of the 
body, but it seizes on the brain and the intellectual power, 



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and raises that. It seizes on the moral, the ethical nature of 
man, until to-day, as I have had occasion more than once to 
tell you, the ethical ideal is mightier than any physical or 
intellectual force in all the world. But it did not stop there. 
It seized the spiritual nature of man; and now it would seem 
to me in perfect accord with the scientific doctrine of evo- 
lution to suppose that we may reach still higher yet, — that 
there is to be a grand, a free, a wide-spread and general 
development of the spiritual nature of man. If so, then it 
would be in perfect accord with this teaching that there should 
have been sporadic and occasional manifestations of this in 
the past ages of the world, leading up to the moment of its 
more general recognition. 

One other point I must notice and emphasize a little. It 
seems to me that a great many people are intellectually con- 
fused as to the choice they must make between the two great 
theories of life. There are people who put aside any claims 
to proof in this direction or that as bearing upon the spirit- 
ual nature of man, and yet cling to their own belief in his 
spiritual nature illogically and without any proof whatever. 
We are presented with two theories, and we cannot choose a 
little of one and a little of the other. One or the other is 
certainly true. One theory is the materialistic. In accord- 
ance with that, human life, any intelligent life, is merely a 
passing, transitory stage, of no more permanent existence 
than these blossoms that now surround me. Humanity itself, 
its brain, its heart, its life, its hope, its Jesus, its Shakspere, 
its Buddha, all the great names of the world, are only curi- 
ous and strange manifestations of this material world, blos- 
soming as the plants blossom, fading as the plants fade. On 
that theory, — think a moment what it means, — the world, 
all the past of the world, is a desert, darkness, a black abyss, 
just behind us — nothing. All who have ever lived have been 



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blotted out, and all that great array of figures are only fan- 
cies of a dream. And before us what ? Night and the dark 
again. We live, we think, we feel for a little while, and that 
is the end. Here is this world of ours, with just a few gen- 
erations that are now peopling it, sailing through space, and 
this is all ; and, when one drops out, he drops into everlast- 
ing nothingness. That is one theory. It does not com- 
mend itself to me, either to my intellect or to my heart. 

The other theory is what ? It is that spirit and life are 
first, supreme ; that spirit shaped and controls form, that 
form only expresses spirit. Why, I have had a dozen bodies 
since I was born into this life. There is nothing that I know 
of in any science to make it unreasonable to believe that 
after the fact which we call death I may still go on clothed 
with a body as real as is this. This theory teaches us that 
the universe is all alive. Young, the great scientist who 
discovered what is now the universally accepted theory of 
light, who lived just a little after Sir Isaac Newton's time, 
recognized as one of the most acute and profound thinkers 
of the world, put it forth as a speculation merely, — he did 
not claim anything more, — that for anything science knew 
to the contrary — we now see hints that look that way — 
there might be no end of living, pulsing, throbbing worlds 
all around us, a spiritual system of which we are the material 
counterpart. 

At any rate, we must choose between the theory of ma- 
terialism and a spiritualistic theory. If the spiritualistic 
theory be true, then death is not the end. I may hope to 
find my friends once more ; and it is quite natural that the 
spiritual natures of certain susceptible ones of the race 
should become developed so that they are capable of re- 
ceiving communications from the other side from those who 
attempt to come into such relations with them. Does that 



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153 



not seem to you perfectly natural ? If there be such a thing 
as a spiritual world, if my father is alive, if your brother, 
sister, husband, wife, is alive, and if they are not very far 
away, would it not be the most natural thing in the world for 
them to try, at any rate, to reach us ? 

I propose now to hint to you a few words as to the proof 
of these claims which Spiritualists offer. One thing is sig- 
nificant, and is immensely to the credit of this higher Spirit- 
ualism. It does not ask anybody to believe with his eyes 
shut. It does not ask anybody to take the statement of the 
most truthful person on the face of the earth. It offers, or 
claims to offer, no end of facts as proved ; and it asks you to 
investigate, and believe or reject on the basis of these claims. 
I say it is immensely to the credit of this higher Spiritual- 
ism that it should put itself on this purely scientific basis as 
being perfectly in accord with the tendencies and movement 
of the modern world. 

You are familiar in a general way with the kind of facts 
that are offered as proof. They are spoken of lightly, some- 
times sneered at. It has been said, Even suppose a physical 
body is lifted up or moved by a force that has apparently no 
connection with the muscular power of any people present, — 
I have heard this spoken of and sneered at a thousand 
times, — suppose it is, what of it ? One of the most learned 
men of this country has given this hint as to what of it. I 
repeat it from him. He makes this point. Everything in 
this world, so far as we know, if let alone, tends downward 
under the force of universal gravity. There is no power 
known in heaven or earth that is capable of lifting even a 
pin against this force of gravity except the power of intelli- 
gent will. If, therefore, it should happen, if it should be 
demonstrated, that there is any such force that is capable of 
doing this, here would be the Rubicon, the very dividing line 



154 



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between materialism and spiritualism, absolute demonstration 
that here is intelligent will at work. I give you this as quo- 
tation, not verbally, but the idea, as expressing the opinion 
of one of the most learned men in this country as to the 
significance of such a fact, supposing it ever occurred. And 
I say to you frankly, in passing, that I am convinced that 
such facts have occurred and do occur. 

I cannot, at this time, even hint at the many proofs that 
the Spiritualists offer. You can find them for yourselves. 
You may, however, be interested if I give you one or two 
brief hints of things which have come under my own obser- 
vation and which have filled me with most restless and eager 
questioning. 

There has been in the modern world a manifestation in 
these last few years of certain strange powers on the part of 
mind as already embodied, such as was not recognized or 
given any place in science until the last half-century. As 
I told you last Sunday, a French scientific commission inves- 
tigated hypnotism and pronounced it all humbug. To-day 
there is not a competent scientific man who does not recog- 
nize its truth. There used to be once great incredulity as 
to the existence of clairvoyance and clairaudience. To day, 
I venture to say there is no person of competent intelligence, 
who has investigated the matter, who does not believe that 
these powers exist. It was once believed that there could 
be no such thing as communication on the part of one mind 
with another, except through the ordinary physical media. 
The idea would have been scorned and flouted a few years 
ago. I venture here again to say that there is probably not 
a man of competent intelligence, who has given it careful and 
earnest investigation, who does not believe in telepathy, or 
mind-reading, — the possibility of minds communicating with 
each other without much regard to space, providing the con- 
ditions and circumstances are favorable. 



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155 



These do not prove Spiritualism at all ; but note this one 
thing. It proves that there has been a tremendous increase 
and widening of the recognition of the powers of the human 
mind. They prove what appears to be, at least, a semi-inde- 
pendence of the recognized physical faculties of communica- 
tion. What kind of mind is this that can manifest itself to 
another a thousand miles away ? Something different from 
the old idea of mind that used to be generally entertained. 
Phenomena like these have become so familiar to me that 
they are no more wonderful now than the telegraph and 
the telephone. I cannot explain the telegraph and the tele- 
phone, but I know they are true. I cannot explain these 
things, but I know they are true. 

But one step more I will hint. Something else has oc- 
curred in my experience which puzzles me beyond all words 
to express. I have no place for it in any scientific theory 
with which I am acquainted ; I do not know what to do with 
it. In the presence of a personal friend, only two being in 
the room, I have had communication made to me of cer- 
tain things occurring at the very instant in another State. 
Where did it come from ? How ? I do not know. I simply 
know that science, according to its present development, has 
nothing whatever to say to facts like these ; it has no place 
to put them, and must widen its theories before it can ac- 
count for them. Of course, if I were ready to accept all the 
claims put forth on the behalf of modern Spiritualism, I 
should naturally explain these facts in the light of that the- 
ory. I frankly say I do not know of any other theory that 
even promises an explanation. 

Perfect candor and fairness compel me to say that some 
of these communications have about them such traces of the 
identity of the "spirits" claiming to communicate as fill me 
with surprise. I have never counted as evidence of "spirit" 



Signs of the Times 



activity anything a " medium " might tell me which I already 
knew. I have said, This may be mind-reading. But, over 
and over again, until it is commonplace, I have had thus 
told me things which it was impossible the psychic should 
ever have known. 

But when, as on several occasions, I am told things that 
neither myself nor the psychic knew, ever did know, or ever 
could have known, so far as I could possibly discover, then 
I know not what to say unless I am to suppose the presence 
and activity of some invisible intelligence. But, were that 
proved, it would still remain to prove that this intelligence 
was once embodied as man or woman. 

Here, then, I rest. I am in no hurry. The one thing, the 
only thing that any sane man can desire is the truth. It 
seems to me the most fool-hardy of all things for any man to 
object to a fact. If it is a fact, then it is only folly to object; 
for if indeed it be a fact it will remain a fact after you have 
objected your life long. The only sane search in the world, 
then, is for truth. I am so anxious to find the truth that I 
cannot afford to make up my mind too readily. I must 
pause, I must wait. I must not only think certain things 
probable, but I must know they are true. 

But this much I will say. It seems to me due to the 
claims of this higher Spiritualism to say that, if I should 
ever come to accept the central claim of Spiritualism, I can- 
not see wherein it would change my belief, scientific, philo- 
sophic, ethical, practical, one whit. What would it do ? It 
would simply place under my feet a rock, demonstrated to be 
a rock, instead of a hope, a trust, a great and glorious belief. 

If this higher faith of Spiritualism should ever be univer- 
sally accepted, what would follow ? It would abolish death. 
It would make you know that the loved are not lost, though 
they have gone before you. It would make any human life 



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157 



here, whatever its poverty, disease or sorrow, worth while, 
because of the grand possibility of the outlook. It would 
give victory over sorrow, over heart-break, over tears. It 
would make one master not only of death, but of life. It 
would make him feel sure that he was building up, day by 
day here, the character that he was to carry with him on to 
that next higher level of the ascent that is never to cease, 
but eternally to rise nearer and nearer to God. 

I then frankly say to you friends that, while I am so anx- 
ious to find the truth that I wish to know that the dust is the 
end of me if it is, I would certainly rather believe that 
it is not. I would rather believe that we are forming the 
beginning of associations here which are to be eternal. I 
would like not only to listen to, but to believe the whisper 
that comes down out of the infinite light : " There shall be no 
more death." 



BREAK-UPS THAT MEAN ADVANCE. 



In the first sermon of the present series I considered the 
break-up of the old faith, stating some of the reasons why it 
can no longer be intelligently held. This morning I propose 
to consider another phase of the question of the breaking-up 
of the old ; namely, that which looks upon the break as the 
condition of a larger and grander building. There are de- 
structions which leave things waste and desolate. There are 
other destructions which are simply preparations for some- 
thing finer than that which has been destroyed. 

You are familiar with the charge so commonly made 
against Unitarians, against liberals of every order : that their 
work is entirely negative, that they tear down and do not 
build up ; that they take away, but do not give anything 
in place of that which they take away. I propose this morn- 
ing to consider whether the experiences through which this 
world is passing to-day have about them anything that ought 
to take away our heart or courage or hope, or whether they 
be not rather something to inspire, to lift us up, to thrill us 
with a grander courage, to take us by the hand and lead us 
to the performance of a larger duty. 

If you were to drive through the country some of these 
warm days in spring, you would see on every hand beautiful 
fields, where the fresh, new grass is growing, where buds are 
unfolding into lovely flowers, and where everything seems 
thrilling and pulsing with glad life. But here and there you 



Break-ups that mean Advance 159 



would see a process that seems like a destruction of all this 
fresh, new life of the year. The farmer is at work in his 
fields ; and the ploughshare that he is driving comes tearing 
along in the midst of the roots of the grasses and flowers, 
and overturning, with its destructive power, all this fresh life 
and beauty. But, if you can look at these things with a 
poet's eye, as did Burns, poet and farmer both, you will 
sympathize with the stanza in which he addresses a mouse 
whose nest, or "housie," is overthrown : — 

" Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin I 
Its silly wa's the wins are strewin' ! 

" Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste, 
And weary winter comin' fast, 
An' cozie here, beneath the blast, 

Thou thought to dwell, 
Till, crash ! the cruel coulter pass'd 

Out thro' thy cell." 

And the same thought that cares for the tiniest form of life 
takes into its great heart the life of the mountain daisy, and 
he sings : — 

" There, in thy scanty mantle clad, 
Thy snawie bosom sunward spread, 
Thou lifts thy unassuming head 

In humble guise ; 
But now the share uptears thy bed, 
And low thou lies ! " 

Looked at from the point of view of the mountain daisy 
and the mouse, the grasses and the flowers, the process that 
is going on is destruction, and only destruction. But the far- 
mer knows, and every observer knows, that it is something 
more than destruction ; that it is the preparatory process for 
a larger, sweeter life ; that it is prophecy of the harvest. 



i6o 



Signs of the Times 



This intimates the kind of destruction that goes on in 
other parts of God's creation besides the fields of the 
farmer. 

The same lesson we may learn from the history of the 
growth of this planet, this our home. Those who have made 
a careful study of geology tell us that, ages ago, the earth 
looked very different from what it does now. The present 
continent then may have been beneath the sea, and that 
which is now the ocean bottom may be made of the conti- 
nents that were green and thrilling and throbbing with life. 
We know that perpetually a process of wasting and wearing 
is going on ; that the ocean is tearing down the cliffs and 
wasting away the shore. But we know that this is not de- 
struction that means waste : it is only the process by which 
God builds a home for his children. Now and then a con- 
tinent is shaken, and a chain of mountains is heaved into the 
air. This, again, is only one of the steps of progress by 
which the world grows, so that here, everywhere, from the 
beginning until now, has been going on this process of de- 
struction, this prophecy and promise of larger building. 

One more illustration to show you that I am dealing not 
with something peculiar to religion, as a great many people 
in their thoughtlessness seem to suppose, but that we are 
dealing with a world-wide, an age-long principle. Let us see 
what happens in the sphere of government. 

The early tribes and peoples organize themselves as best 
they may. But we know that the first attempts at government 
are always harsh, hard, cruel, the domination of some war- 
chief of relentless power, or some despot who lords it over 
his fellows. We know, also, that, when people become ac- 
customed to the forms of government in which they have 
been born and have grown up, they are apt to identify gov- 
ernment itself with these forms. But what happens ? Peo- 



Break-ups that mean Advance 161 

pie become wiser. They learn more. They desire their 
freedom. The conditions that surround them do not favor 
the best and noblest life that is in them. There is not room 
for the development of the highest and finest manhood ; and 
yet those who dominate and govern wish to retain their privi- 
leges, and they identify these particular forms of govern- 
ment with government itself, and so are not willing to relin- 
quish their hold. What is going on in Russia to-day ? The 
Czar, the nobility, are attempting to keep things as they 
have been for ages, attempting to repress and hold down this 
living, rising, expanding power which is in human hearts and 
brains. So we know they are in danger of revolution every 
moment of every day. Unless the human race can progress 
in some peaceful, quiet, natural way, it must by revolution. 
But when this power asserts itself, when men and women 
declare that they will have freedom to be the best that is in 
them, it does not mean the destruction of government. It 
means only that the principles of a higher, finer power of 
government are developed within their own hearts and lives, 
and that the old form is no longer fitted to that larger life. 

In the time of the French Revolution, it was perfectly 
natural that the king and nobility, and all the adherents of 
the old regime, should suppose that the world was coming to 
an end, — that all government was in danger, and that an- 
archy, the destruction of all order, was at hand. And yet 
history teaches us that it was only the people demanding 
room to grow, room to think, room to live out their higher, 
finer life. 

Note one thing which is suggestive as parallel to what 
is true too in religion. As the world gets wiser and bet- 
ter, the forms of government — the external display of it — 
may naturally and safely become less and less, because, as 
the principles of government become incarnated in the 



Signs of the Times 



hearts and lives of the people, they do not need this outward 
display, this external pressure, to hold them in order. They 
grow orderly like the unfolding life of a tree. 

Come, now, and note the same thing going on in religion. 
We are passing through a phase of religious life that un- 
doubtedly means the destruction of the old order, the break- 
ing up of the old faith. You have to go back only one or 
two hundred years in Europe, to come to a period when the 
Church held the life of Europe in its hands, dominated not 
only in the airy regions of faith, but controlled the earthly, 
or secular, matters as well. The Church was the dominant 
power, not only in the intellectual world, in the moral life, 
in the Church, but in the State, everywhere. To-day it has 
lost its grasp on Europe, not showing a capacity as yet to 
expand its life to meet the growing demands of the people. 
It has been pushed one side and is being left behind. 

In Protestant countries very much the same process is 
going on. The Church holds no such place in the rever- 
ence, in the thought, in the love, of the people, as it did a 
hundred years ago. The newspaper, literature, science, art, 
all of these, instead of being servants of the Church as they 
once were, have taken the position of rivals ; and there are 
thousands of people who feel as though they could get along 
very well without the Church. 

Then those who stand as representatives of the Church 
do not preach the old dogmas, the old conceptions of things, 
as they used to. They do not make the extraordinary claims 
they used to. I suppose there are hardly any ministers of 
any church to-day who will claim that it is absolutely neces- 
sary for a man to be a member of any particular communion, 
in order to stand in right relations with God, to be " saved." 
This process, then, of the apparent disintegration of the old 
faith in religion is going on. 



Break-ups that mean Advance 163 

Let us note, for a moment, certain accompaniments of this 
change, and see whether they can be looked upon as causes. 

Is the Church, as organized religion, losing its hold on the 
masses of men because these men do not know so much, are 
not so wise, as they used to be ? You know very well that 
there never was a time in the history of the world when the 
average intelligence of men was so high as it is to-day. 
Whatever this process may mean, it does not mean that the 
Church has lost its hold because people are growing igno- 
rant. People are not growing ignorant : they are wiser than 
they were. 

Are they less reverent than they used to be ? I cannot 
think so. The exhibition of irreverence here and there 
means not that the people do not revere that which seems to 
them worthy of reverence, but it means only that they re- 
gard these things no longer as able to command the rever- 
ence of their hearts as they used to. They are shifting their 
attitude. They do not stand in the same relation to these 
things. They do not look at them as they once did. 

Does the world care less for truth now than it used to ? 
Is that the reason why it has turned away from what the old 
churches are accustomed to speak of as God's truth ? I 
think that every competent man who has observed the drift 
of the world will be obliged to confess that there never was 
a time since humanity existed when men were so eager to 
find the truth about everything as they are to-day. Men are 
seeking for the truth with a thirst that only the truth can 
slake, — the truth in heaven, the truth on earth, the truth of 
the past, the truth of the present, the truth about everything. 
Truth is the one thing in whose presence all men are ready 
to uncover, and at whose feet all people are ready to bow. 

Is it because people are not so good, morally, as they used 
to be that religion is losing its hold upon them ? Are they 



164 



Signs of the Times 



giving up something and in the place of it taking something 
poorer, and so as a natural result deteriorating ? Every care- 
ful student of the world knows that there never was a time 
in the history of man when the average love of justice, the 
love of mercy, the love of good, noble, and humane qualities, 
was so high as to-day. What then ? 

Whatever this change may mean that we are going 
through, it is not because of the world's growing less wise, 
less reverent, less truth-loving, less good ; and we who love 
religion, and believe in it, can we confess for a moment that 
the cause of the " decay of religion " is the fact that the world 
is growing wiser and better ? If we dare make a confession 
like that, then it means the death of religion. Humanity is 
not going to take one backward step in this matter of wis- 
dom or goodness or reverence or love for truth. And if 
religion is being outgrown by this process of humanity's 
becoming better, then is it indeed proved to be a thing 
that belonged only in the childhood of the race , and that 
can be dispensed with by our grown-up manhood. 

I am afraid, in order to outline my subject thoroughly and 
as carefully as it deserves, that I may be obliged to repeat 
some of the things I have said and possibly some illustra- 
tions which I have used in previous years. If I do so, I do 
it with my eyes open, and because there are some things 
that need to be repeated and impressed upon the minds of 
thoughtful people, in order that they may comprehend the 
kind of world in which they are living. 

I wish to raise the question as to what religion is, although 
I have done it before, that you may see that in my opinion, 
whatever is happening, it is not the decay of religion. 

Religion has always been, from the beginning of the world 
until now, and always must be the same thing in essence. 
It only changes its form as men change their conceptions of 



Break-ups that mean Advance 165 

the world, of God, of themselves. Religion is and always 
has been the attempt on the part of men to get into closer, 
more helpful relations with God, or with whatever power 
they think of as manifesting itself in and governing the 
universe. The lowest fetich worshipper recognizes a power 
outside of him that can help or hurt him, and his religion 
is praying or making an offering to this power, to ward off 
his anger, if he thinks he is displeased, or to win his favor, 
if he desres his help. And the highest and noblest Chris- 
tian that ever lived is engaged in precisely the same effort. 
He is trying to do what he believes God wants him to do, 
whether it is to pray or read the Bible or sing a hymn or 
engage in a service or preach a sermon or help an unfortu- 
nate fellow-man or cultivate a special internal feeling or 
state of mind. He is trying to do what he believes God 
wants him to do, for the sake of getting into a closer and 
more friendly relation with his God. How people will do it, 
what form of service they will engage in, all the external 
manifestation of the religious life, must always turn on what 
people think about God, what they think about themselves, 
what they think God wants them to do. 

You see, then, that religion always has been one in pur- 
pose, in essence ; and you see that that essence and the 
effort of science are precisely the same. The scientific man, 
whether he believes in God or not, believes in a power that 
is not himself, that is outside of him, that produces him, a 
dower in relation to which he must live, a power that may 
help him or hurt him ; and so the whole effort of science is 
simply to find out the nature of this power and get into right 
relations with it. Science has for its essential idea, purpose, 
and aim, precisely the same thing that religion has, always 
has had, and always must have. Religion, then, is simply 
man's search for the secret of life. It is man trying to get 



Signs of the Times 



into right relation with this power that folds him in its arms, 
— the power in coming into right relations with which he 
finds life, prosperity, happiness ; the power that was here 
before he came, and that will be here after he has passed 
away. Religion in its very nature is eternal. So long as 
there is a universe, so long as there is a man in the universe 
capable of thinking about the relation in which he stands to 
it, so long religion must remain, no matter what name it 
wears or what form it assumes. Religion, then, is one of 
the immortals. You may be sure, then, that the process we 
are passing through, however many religions may die, does 
not mean the death of religion itself. 

We are ready now to note what it is that is taking place, 
and consider whether the process through which we are pass- 
ing is a discouraging or a hopeful one. 

The first thing that has happened is such a growth on the 
part of human intelligence as gives us an entirely new and 
enormously expanded conception of this universe that is our 
home. We are passing through a process of outgrowing one 
universe and becoming gradually adapted to and at home in 
another. And the new one is so grand in its dimensions that 
the first feeling of those who have left the old and are look- 
ing out into the new is of being utterly astray and alone. 

Thirty-six years after this city of Boston was founded, 
Milton took out a license in London for the publication of 
"Paradise Lost." The idea of the universe represented in 
Milton's poem was the old idea which the world had held for 
hundreds of years. We talk about the " spheres " to-day ; 
but we have forgotten completely — the most of us — that 
the meaning of that word " sphere " has completely changed 
since Shakspere wrote it, since Milton wrote it. What was 
the old universe ? The world, this little planet of ours, was 
the centre ; and outside of it were ten crystalline, concentric 



Break-ups that mean Advance 167 

spheres, just as substantial, just as real, as those globes that 
surround the gas-jets. To these were attached the moon, 
sun, planets ; and in the outer one were all the stars. 
These spheres revolved, holding the planets and sun and 
stars in their orbits. And the whole universe was not so 
large as the at present known orbit of the moon; for it 
took Satan and his angels only nine days and nights to fall 
from heaven clear to the bottom of the universe, according 
to Milton's picture. 

Let me now hint a word as to how we are trying to get the 
universe adjusted to our thought to-day. It takes light eight 
and a half minutes to travel the 92,500,000 miles from the 
sun to the earth. When you leave our sun, our nearest 
neighbor, the very first star beyond our system is so far 
away that it takes its light three and a half years to reach 
us. And then where are we ? Standing on the threshold of 
a universe that is infinite. In every direction open out star- 
lighted vistas that lose themselves in measureless space. 
This system of ours is part of the Milky Way. It is a little 
river of light, apparently a sort of Gulf Stream, crossing the 
ocean of the sky over our heads. Sir William Herschel 
estimated that, as he looked at and studied the Milky Way, 
116,000 suns passed across the field of his telescope in fifteen 
minutes. On another occasion 258,000 crossed the field of 
his telescope in forty-one minutes. Think what a change 
of thought two centuries have wrought concerning this house 
of God that is our home ! 

And is it any loss ? Think of the immeasurably grander 
world of which we are inhabitants. 

Then what must we think of God ? Can we have the old 
ideas any longer, — of God just a little way over our heads, 
sitting on a throne, sending out angel messengers to see how 
things are with us down here on our little earth, and receiv- 



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Sig?is of the Times 



ing their reports as a king would send out a messenger to 
some distant province and receive his message on his return ? 

Now where and what is God ? Where is he not ? We may 
well use the bold poetry of the Israelitish writer, and say 
that he weigheth the stars as the dust of his balance, he 
taketh up the isles as a very little thing. Suns a thousand 
times larger than ours attest his power in the far-off deeps 
of heaven. But he is not there alone. I hold in my hand 
the tiniest flower that has opened this morning ; and I need 
all of God to explain to me its petals, its tinting, its fra- 
grance. I look into your eyes ; and God looks out of them, 
out of the love, the intelligence, of your souls, into mine. 
God is not on a throne ; but he is everywhere, — the life, 
power, grace, tenderness, care, of the world, infinitely nearer 
to us than he used to be when we thought that we could 
send up a prayer, and he would send down an angel to 
hear what we wanted, by his hand minister to our necessities. 
It is God himself that ministers to our necessities every wak- 
ing and every sleeping hour of every day and every night, — 
God, all of God, all his wisdom, all his love, all his care, 
holding us in his arms, leading us by his hand with a tender- 
ness and a grace as complete as though it were all he had to 
do. This is the God that we are trying to think to-day. Is 
there any loss about it ? Infinite gain, rather, to those who 
wake up to and appreciate what the growing intelligence of 
the world signifies. 

Then, with this new universe and this new God, we must 
have a new conception of humanity, not the wreck and ruin 
of a modern creation, — man young, indeed, compared with 
the stars, young, indeed, compared with the planet itself, his 
home, but man unspeakably older than our minds are cap- 
able of comprehending. Man has been here on this planet 
perhaps two hundred thousand years. He began in the 



Break-ups that mean Advance 



169 



lowest animalism and barbarism, and he has been climbing 
up a stairway whose steps were tears and heartache and 
blood ; but not these only, joy, also, and hope and love. He 
has been climbing up by every process that has made him 
more a man, until to-day he is king of the planet, learning 
more and more of God's great secrets, grasping more and 
more the forces we call natural, but which are only the pres- 
ent living God, coming into closer relation with God at every 
step, being helped by him to a wider, higher, larger life, — 
man not fallen, man ascending from the beginning, man to 
ascend still — until the end shall I say ? No, friends, though 
we cannot comprehend it, and the words mean nothing to 
us, there is no end. Out through the darkness, out through 
the clouds that seem to mark the limit of life, we are begin- 
ning to learn that he goes on, his whole self, as he has de- 
veloped until the moment that he disappears from our sight, 
climbing on and up Godward, precisely the same as when 
here. Our whole conception, then, of the nature of this man 
and how to deal with him has been changed, — changed by 
our learning God's truth about him, that is all. It is not 
a lower conception, not a loss, but an unspeakable gain. 

And, then, we are getting a larger and finer idea of God's 
revelation to the world. He did not send one little book to 
one little people and leave all the rest of his children, all the 
nations, the races, of the world, to stumble and fall in dark- 
ness. We believe to-day that he has sent under every sky, 
to every tongue and people, just so much light as they were 
capable of receiving, and that he is leading them on grad- 
ually, slowly, through the ages, — for the Infinite Power in 
infinite time is in no haste, — leading them on to a grander 
perception of the ever grander truth. We are learning to 
think of all truth, whatever its source or however it comes to 
us, as so many sentences in the ever-growing book of God. 



I/O 



Signs of the Times 



We have changed, then, our entire conception of the uni- 
verse, of God, of man, of revelation, of destiny. And these 
changes have come about not as the result of any deteriora- 
tion. The old ideas are crumbling, being disintegrated, not 
because of ignorance, not because of immorality, not because 
of infidelity, as it is used in a sneering sense of any unbelief. 
The world's infidelity means simply a larger belief. We are 
outgrowing these old ideas, and finding out that they are not 
large enough to match the universe of God. 

What, then, ought to be the duty of men ? To trust in 
God and love their fellow-men, — not a duty of fear, not a 
duty of hesitancy, not a duty of looking back with regret. 
We may have our sentiment, if we will, about the things that 
the world has loved and cherished so long. I should think 
less of any man who had no sentiment about his boyhood ; 
but I should think less still of him if he had so little appre- 
ciation of his manhood that he wished to go back and be a 
boy again. Reverence the things that pertain to the child- 
hood of the race, love them, deal with them tenderly, as with 
old associations, but recognize the fact of your growing man- 
hood and womanhood, and turn bravely, grandly, with a 
magnificent faith in God, to the day-dawn. I do not believe 
this world is hastening to decay. We are only emerging 
from the morning twilight, not descending into the evening. 
God's great day and humanity's great day are still ahead 
of us. 

What, then, of the duty and work of the Church ? Is the 
Church to become less and less as time goes on? We shall 
change our emphasis in regard to many things. A great 
many rites and ceremonies and services that have been re- 
garded as vital will lose all their meaning to us for the 
simple reason that we have outgrown them. The advancing 
Church, in the light of the advancing knowledge of the 



Break-tips that mean Advance 



world, will find grander sanctities, grander rites and services, 
grander songs, to match a grander world and a grander God. 
There shall be no less of reverence, of sacredness, of any of 
the fine, sweet, high things that make up the duty and glory 
of the religious life. 

And the Church will become organized, I believe, by and 
by into something more magnificent than the past has ever 
dreamed of. Science, philosophy, literature, poetry, paint- 
ing, sculpture, music, all these things were once ministers 
and servants of the Church. They shall be again ; for, when 
humanity has grasped the idea that religion is the grandest 
concern of the human brain as well as of the human heart, 
that it means the science of all life in this world and forever- 
more, then the Church will organize itself round these mag- 
nificent ideas, and will call into its service once more all 
science, all literature, all art, all music, all poetry, and so 
assert and make good its claim to the utmost reverence and 
love of all mankind. 

And now, as illustrating my faith, I wish to give you what 
I think is a noble expression of this whole line of thought, 
put into form by our beloved Unitarian poet, Oliver Wendell 
Holmes : — 

The waves unbuild the wasting shore ; 

Where mountains towered, the billows sweep, 
Yet still their borrowed spoils restore, 

And raise new empires from the deep. 

So, while the floods of thought lay waste 

The old domain of chartered creeds, 
Its heaven-appointed tides will haste 

To shape new homes for human needs. 

Be ours to mark with hearts unchilled 

The change an outworn age deplores ; 
The legend sinks, but faith shall build 

A fairer throne on new-found shores. 



Signs of the Times 



The star shall glow in western skies 

That shone o'er Bethlehem's hallowed shrine, 

And once again the temple rise 

That crowned the rock of Palestine. 



Though scattered far, the flock may stray : 
His own the Shepherd still shall claim, — 

The saints who never learned to pray, 
The friends who never spoke his name. 

Dear Master, while we hear thy voice 

That says, " The truth shall make you free," 

Thy servants still by loving choice, 
Oh, keep us faithful unto thee ! 



THE NEW CITY OF GOD. 



Under the figure of a garden of plenty and peace or of 
a golden age or of a perfect city, humanity has always been 
dreaming of an ideal condition for the race. But it is one 
of the marked signs of the present time that these dreams 
are coming to be something more than dreams. They are 
not merely in the air to amuse the idle fancies of a leisure 
hour, not something thought of — hardly as a possibility, but 
— only as a beautiful thing, if it might be. In the modern 
world, these dreams of the ideal have come to be motive 
forces. They are watchwords, they are rallying cries. People 
believe more than they used to in the possibilities of human 
progress. They believe that these dreams can be brought 
down out of the sky, and organized as realities under the 
forms of human society. 

Since this is so, it seemed to me that I could do no more 
fitting thing in the last of this series than to consider a little 
some of these dreams, try to find out which way the forces 
of the world are moving, so that we may co-operate, if possi- 
ble, with those forces, and help on the realization of human- 
ity's age-long and long-deferred hope ; for we need to know 
which way the forces of the world are moving, apart from any 
conscious or purposed endeavor of our own. If I believed, 
as many loud-voiced reformers seem to, that the universe up 
to the present time had been all wrong, — wrong from first to 
last, — that things were deteriorating, that things were perpet- 



174 



Signs of the Times 



ually changing to the worse, then I, for one, should have no 
heart even to attempt the deliverance of the world. Unless 
the infinite forces are with us, what avail all our puny attempts 
to construct an ideal earth ? Our only hope is in the faith 
that there has been advance from the beginning, that we are 
advancing forward and upward to-day ; and the only thing 
that we can do is to find out which way God is moving, 
and, instead of playing the part of obstruction and hindrance, 
do what we can to co-operate, help on, hasten a little, the 
coming 

" Of that far-off divine event 
To which the whole creation moves." 

I ask you to consider a few typical examples of this dream 
of the ideal as it has been indulged in, in the past, so that 
you may see the changed conceptions of our modern thought 
as to how these things are to be brought about. 

And, first, I call your attention to the dream of John on 
Patmos. It is evident that he had no conception of any 
natural social good order here in the world. The earth was 
under the control of him who is called in the New Testament 
"the god of this world," — the evil power. Humanity was 
in a hopeless condition, so far as itself was concerned. 
So John's dream is of an ideal divine, perfect city, not built 
on the earth, not the result of any human endeavor, but 
miraculously let down out of the heavens. His idea was 
that humanity could be saved only by divine interposition 
from without. He had no conception of humanity's achiev- 
ing its own deliverance, of there being any divine force in 
humanity working to the natural production of any realiza- 
tion of his dream. 

A few ages later, we come to the time of Augustine, the 
great intellectual work of whose life was the book from 



The New City of God 



which I have taken the hint of my subject, " The City of 
God." The Roman empire was crumbling, hastening to its 
decay. Augustine conceived the idea of the Church as a 
divine order miraculously constructed, miraculously created, 
which was to be built upon the ruins of the empire, and so 
be the embodiment of an ideal political and social as well 
as religious order. But his dream proved to be only a 
dream, never to be realized ; for that Church which he saw 
growing until it mastered and controlled the whole earth is 
to-day weaker than it has ever been for a thousand years, 
and so evidently a thing of the past that its bitterest enemy 
need not stand in terror of it any more. 

For a series of centuries after the time of Augustine, all 
the kings of Europe put forth the claim that they ruled by 
divine right. They tried to encircle their corrupt, selfish, 
oppressive, tyrannous crowns with a halo of divine glory, 
setting themselves up as the ministers of God for the organi- 
zation of human society. But all these dreams have faded, 
and become a thing of the past. 

One more attempt was made, which, on account of its 
peculiar significance, I need to note. When the Puritans 
and the Pilgrims fled from persecution on the other side the 
sea, and came to our dear old New England, they came with 
the avowed intention, the clear thought-out purpose, of es- 
tablishing here a divine political and social order, nothing 
less than a theocracy, — a kingdom of God on earth. No 
one but "saints," church members, were to have any control 
in political affairs. No one but church members might vote ; 
and, when laws were passed, these laws were, according to 
their understanding, only translations of the divine law as 
recorded in the only infallible Book, — translations of God's 
law into the statutes of our old Commonwealth. And how 
far did their dream succeed ? It succeeded only in making 



176 



Signs of the Times 



itself a sad lesson of cruelty, of narrowness, bigotry, perse- 
cution, that meant anything but freedom, anything but the 
development of perfect individuality, anything but peace and 
joy. 

At the present time, you have only to read the reviews and 
the newspapers, you have only to listen to public addresses 
on every hand, to be made aware of the fact that there 
are definite, earnest attempts being made to realize a half- 
dozen different, antagonistic, mutually exclusive dreams of 
a perfect social order. On the one hand, men are at- 
tempting to bring about a condition of anarchy ; that is, 
a condition not necessarily, according to their ideas, of 
social disorder, but merely of utter individual freedom, — the 
abolition of all social constraint. Some of the earnest 
advocates of these ideas really believe that most of the evils 
of society to-day are the result of misguided and foolish 
attempts to control individual action instead of leaving men 
and women to act out the natures with which they are 
endowed. On the other hand, you will note that there are 
those who hold a precisely contrary theory, — the Socialists, 
Nationalists, who believe that there is too much individual 
freedom already. If their ideas could be carried out, they 
would make all of us simply fragments, parts, of a great 
social machine, where there should be very little of individ- 
ual initiative, very little of individual liberty of any kind, 
but where every man, woman, and child should live not for 
himself or herself, but only for this ideal organism that is 
spoken of as society, or the nation. 

Then there is Tolstoi with his dream of a social order, to 
bring about which he is engaged in the writing and publish- 
ing of books and pamphlets, making use of his great influ- 
ence in every direction. 

There is William Morris, the poet, the artist, the socialist, 



The New City of God 



177 



whom I had the pleasure of visiting and talking with in 
London last summer, who has, on the other hand, his ideal, 
and is as earnest as any missionary propagandist in all the 
world ; who, with all his culture, all his artistic ability, all 
his power and influence of every kind, goes into the streets 
day after day, evening after evening, preaching what he 
believes to be the gospel of the new society to any chance 
crowd that he may gather to listen to his words. 

All these movements, then, are going on, showing the rest- 
lessness of humanity at the present time, — restive under 
imperfect conditions, restive under its burden of disease, of 
poverty, of crime, haunted by the ideal of a better state, and 
beginning to believe that it is in the power of men to radi- 
cally change and better their conditions. They are not 
dreaming only any longer, but making their dreams motive 
force for earnest endeavor. 

I wish now to attempt — as well as I can in the time that 
is mine — to give you some hints concerning what I believe 
to be the ideal condition of the race, concerning what seems 
to me to be the divine methods as they are apparent in the 
history of the past, and so to give you some hints as to 
hopeful directions in which we may put forth our efforts to 
turn the dreams of our enthusiasm into reality in the days 
that are to come. 

What would be an ideal condition of humanity ? I do 
not want that city that John dreamed of, even if it were pos- 
sible. In the first place, you will note the great change that 
has come over our thought. No one any longer believes that 
this new condition of humanity is to come by any divine in- 
terposition, suddenly wrought among us, from without. We 
all now believe in evolution, in human growth, in the possi- 
bility of a development from our present condition into 
something that is higher and better. The main body of the 



i 7 8 



Signs of the Times 



churches, indeed, apparently has given up the possibility of 
bringing about such a condition of affairs in this world. 
They have postponed their dream to that mysterious country 
that lies beyond the border-land of death. But, on the part 
of those of us who believe that a better condition can be 
brought about here, let us try to see what that better con- 
dition is. It may not seem to you half as gorgeous as the 
picture of the Apocalypse, but let us try to put in plain words 
just what we would all desire for mankind if we could have 
our way. 

We would not need to change the surface of the earth a 
great deal. This earth of ours is fair enough, sweet enough, 
beautiful enough, good enough. But we would like to reach 
such a condition of society as that wherein every man, every 
woman, every child, might have opportunity — for what ? 
Opportunity, in the first place, — and there are millions on 
the earth to-day who do not have this opportunity, — to live 
healthful physical lives. This is the first, the basis, the 
foundation of all. If we could realize our kingdom of 
heaven, we would have first, then, such a condition of things 
as would enable all persons to live healthy physical lives. 

Next, we would have mankind released from their overbur- 
den of drudgery : we would not abolish labor if we were wise, 
but we would abolish too much labor. For, mark you, if 
humanity is ever to rise to anything above the animal, it 
must be by finding time, leisure to study, to develop, to grow, 
to culture one's self. What do any of us mean by living ? 
We would not give a snap of our fingers for bare existence 
with its contents left out. When we talk about living, we 
mean food, clothing, shelter, that are at least comfortable, 
healthful conditions for the body, time enough to cultivate 
our love of music, to develop at least some taste for art, for 
beauty of form and color, for the lovely things of human life ; 



The New City of God 



179 



time enough to think, to study and cultivate the brain, to 
find out what is true and what is false, to understand some- 
thing, at least, of this wondrous world home of ours, to know 
something of the past and of the pathway by which this race 
of ours has come to be what it is to-day. We mean, then, a 
little wealth, — enough to release us from day-long drudgery, 
— time for cultivating these higher sides of human nature, 
these things that we think of as peculiarly manly and 
womanly. For, if you stop to think of it for a moment, you 
will see this fact : that, in a condition of the world in which 
every man and woman should be compelled to labor all his 
or her waking hours merely for subsistence, anything like a 
human life would be impossible. It would only be working, 
eating so that you could work, sleeping so that you could 
work, the drudgery of a mere animal existence. There must 
be accumulated capital, there must be leisure, before men 
and women can rise out of the animal stage and live in the 
human. This, then, is our ideal condition of the world ; and 
what do we need finer and better ? A world where we 
could all live healthfully, where we should have opportunity 
to cultivate all the higher, finer sides of our nature, opportu- 
nity to live for music and literature, opportunity to think, to 
study, to remember, and to forecast, — opportunity, in short, 
to lead a human life. 

This, then, being our ideal, let us consider for a little as 
to whether the world is actually moving towards that. Mr. 
George has said in his wonderfully interesting book, " Prog- 
ress and Poverty," that the rich are getting richer and the 
poor are getting poorer; that is, that the common people 
are getting worse off all the time. I do not believe that any 
one can intelligently study the history of the last fifty years 
without being convinced that there never was a time in the 
history of the world when the common people were so well 



i So 



Signs of the Times 



off as they are to-day ; that, even under the present oppres- 
sions and along present lines, they are growing better and 
better off every year. But that is not enough. We would 
like to hasten it if we might. I speak of this because, if I 
were not convinced of this, I should have no heart or hope 
to endeavor to make things better than they are. 

What, then, is the condition of the world ? For, if we are 
to learn anything about the future, we must learn that lesson 
from the past. We must find out the lines of progress along 
which the world has been moving, and then see if we can 
hasten the process a little. ■ 

Millions of years passed by between the fire-mist in 
which our solar system began and the time when this won- 
derful earth of ours, mountain-pillared, cloud-canopied, with 
its green fields and its waters glinting in the sunlight, be- 
came a fitting home for man. When it was ready, man 
appeared, — not man perfect, but man developed, as I be- 
lieve, by natural processes out of the lower forms of animal 
life ; developing as naturally as the flower, and, mark you, 
just as divinely as the flower; for the natural to my thought 
is divine. Weak and ignorant, man had to learn by expe- 
rience • for there is no other way in which a finite being can 
learn. Carry it in mind all the way through discussions like 
this, that the one purpose of God in this mysterious life of 
ours, the one supreme purpose, is the development of a 
soul ; and the development of souls has not been waiting all 
these ages until we get a perfect earth and a finished condi- 
tion of society. That process is going on all the time ; and, 
if the schooling is not finished here, there is time enough 
and room enough in God's infinite universe to complete it in 
his own time and in his own way. So let us not think that 
all the time is wasted because our ideals are not yet realized. 

Man has been developed physically, how? By strug- 



The New City of God 



181 



gle. This world has been a gymnasium for the physical 
development of man. He has been developing mentally, 
how? Through struggle, through mistakes, through falling 
and rising again. This world has been a school-house in 
which man has been morally cultured and developed, how ? 
After precisely the same method as that by which he has 
been developed physically and intellectually. People seem 
to think that the existence of evil is somehow a great mis- 
take, no part of God's plan, something utterly unlike any- 
thing else. But I am unable to see how mankind could 
have been developed morally except through this struggle 
with evil, through making mistakes and falling and rising 
again. So here along these lines mankind has been devel- 
oping through all these ages. 

Not only in these ways has man developed, but in political 
ways, from the time when there was no freedom, when men 
were subject to the caprice of successful war-chiefs, down 
through the Middle Ages, when a man was hardly anything 
but a means of power in the hands of the robber barons, to 
a time when, in the words of Theodore Parker, quoted and 
made memorable by Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, we 
are "a government of the people and for the people and by 
the people." You see that the growth, the political develop- 
ment of the people, has been from the very first towards the 
growth of the individual and more freedom of action for the 
individual. I emphasize that because I shall have occasion 
to recur to it. 

There has also gone on a social development parallel 
to this of the physical and political, towards that form of 
society in which the individual shall count for more and 
more, and be less under the domination of the social influ- 
ences that tend ever to repress any movement of individual- 
ity and growth. 



182 



Signs of the Times 



Parallel to this is the growth in the industrial life of the 
world. At first, the drudgery of the world was done by 
slaves and slaves alone, no freedom in it whatever. There 
was no power of moving from place to place, no choice of 
masters or of tasks. We have not reached the ideal indus- 
trial condition of the world yet, but every step of progress 
from the first has been towards industrial liberty for the 
individual ; and they who talk about the wage-system as a 
system of slavery, as being as bad as that which it super- 
seded and of things as going from bad to worse, are either 
ignorant or grievously misrepresent the past. The tendency 
I believe to be, in every direction, not towards a socialism 
that shall repress individual action, but towards another kind 
of socialism, in which individualism, individual liberty, indi- 
vidual initiative, shall have the largest, the freest, and the 
most unimpeded course. 

What has been attained through a large part of the his- 
tory of the social development of the past has been the 
result of what science calls natural selection, which may 
mean to our minds a blind process, a struggle between 
individuals in which the strongest comes out ahead. But 
we have reached a point where it is possible for us to intro- 
duce another force, a conscious human selection. We have 
gone far enough, and have become wise enough, so that we 
can do something towards creating for ourselves better condi- 
tions. You know that science talks a great deal about the 
influence of environment ; and that is wise. There is a con- 
stant tendency on the part of all things to be adapted to and 
shaped by their surroundings. The lower world is helpless 
in the hands of this force. A bird is able to build a better 
nest, if you give it a better place and better materials out of 
which to construct it ; but man can do more than that. Man 
can create new and better and higher conditions, so as to lift 
in that way the level of the individual and social life. 



The New City of God 



What and how much can we do ? Not a great deal, but 
we can do a little. We cannot make this development very 
rapid ; and I believe that the thing we need to guard against 
at the present time is the thought that we can do things 
suddenly, that we can bring about a perfect condition of the 
world in only a little while ; because just as soon as we 
delude ourselves with thoughts like this we are only laying 
up for ourselves bitter disappointment and a loss of courage 
to do the something that is possible. 

In the first place, we can, by social agreement, make 
knowledge universal. He who is ignorant is the victim of 
his surroundings. It is only he who knows the forces with 
which he deals who is capable of controlling them and mak- 
ing them serve him. The next generation ought not to 
come without every man and woman who is to compose it 
possessing that accumulated stock of knowledge which the 
world has in its possession, — all that should enable it to 
avoid the mistakes, the blunders, of the past, and so control 
and lift the circumstances that are to surround it. 

What else can we do ? I believe there is a hint of truth 
at least in that for which Mr. Henry George is contending. 
I believe that the natural resources of the earth ought, as 
rapidly as possible, to be freed from the monopolies of pri- 
vate and individual ownership, at least to the extent of giv- 
ing every man all possible opportunity. 

To illustrate what I mean. Go to England, and there 
you find a man who never did a stroke of work in his life, 
who never, in the slightest degree, added to the welfare of 
the world, possessing and keeping for his own private be- 
hoof, in an unproductive condition, thousands and thou- 
sands of acres of land. On the other hand, such a condi- 
tion of poverty as led Mr. William Morris to say to me that 
there were five hundred thousand people in London to-day 



Signs of the Times 



who do not know what they are going to eat to-morrow. 
There ought to be such a condition of things as to make it 
unprofitable for any man to control the natural resources of 
the wealth of this world unused. So far as possible, every 
man ought to have opportunity to use these springs of 
wealth and prosperity that no man made, but which are the 
gift of God to all the world. I am perfectly well aware that 
every attempt to bring about this condition of things is sur- 
rounded by a thousand difficulties. There are inherited and 
vested wrongs not only, but inherited and vested rights, 
that must be regarded. If this man has not earned his 
thousands of acres, he is not to blame for having been born 
into their possession. It is a manifestly difficult and deli- 
cate task, but something can gradually be done in this direc- 
tion by which eventually the natural resources of the world 
may be thrown wide open as an opportunity for every man. 

One other thing can be done. This will seem to many a very 
slight thing at first ; and yet, in the light of what I have said, 
you ought to appreciate its immense significance. We can, 
we ought, we must, shorten the hours of labor for those who 
depend on their daily labor for their bread. Why must we ? 
For the simple reason that no man can by any possibility 
cultivate himself in those things which make manhood un- 
less he have at least a little time. The world's work can 
be done, not only as much as is being done, but more than 
is done now. More wealth can be created than is being 
created, and still shorter hours of labor be assigned to those 
whose daily life is drudgery for bread. Some things in this 
direction are possible. 

Now, at the last, what is the outcome of it all ? The out- 
come, as I have said, is that the tendency of all growth from 
the beginnings of life on this earth have been, according to 
the formula of Mr. Herbert Spencer, from the homogeneous 



The New City of God 



to the heterogeneous, from sameness towards variety, from 
the social mass towards the individual. So that I believe, if 
we can learn anything from the history of the past as to 
what is going on to-day, it is that the outcome of evolution is 
to be an emphasizing and lifting up higher and a broaden- 
ing of the range of individual life. The outcome of progress 
is not to be a solid mass of machinery with the individual 
only a cog or a spoke in the wheel. It is to be the develop- 
ment of millions on millions of perfected individualities. 
And all this dream of a perfect society out of imperfect 
units is absurd on the face of it. You cannot build a per- 
fect house of imperfect bricks ; neither can you construct 
perfect society of imperfect individuals. The first step 
towards the perfect society is the perfecting of the individual 
life. 

This does not mean the abolition of competition. It is 
possible to make competition appear to be a very hard, ugly, 
cruel thing. But look at it for a moment. Competition 
means not only the cheapening of products, it means not 
only a perpetual pressure towards discovering new and better 
things : it means the sharpening of the individual faculty 
and power. It is the development of the individual life. 
And for whose good is it ? I hear those who are socialists 
denouncing competition, as though it were the invention of 
the evil one and had come from the pit. For whose good is 
competition ? It is for the benefit of every man, woman, and 
child in the world except those who are manufacturing or 
dealing in the same material. And it is an injury to them 
only, looked at as manufacturers and dealers. But they are 
also consumers. Looking at them as consumers, it is for 
their good. I do not believe that competition is evil or 
wrong, for it seems to me to be God-ordained ; for it has ex- 
isted from the first, and every step of progress has come 
under the influence and guidance of competition. 



Signs of the Times 



Where, then, is the principle of socialism to come in? 
Just here. What is a perfect individual, developed to his 
utmost, alone ? Take your perfect individual : let him be a 
speaker, and he depends on his audience ; let him be a 
painter, and he depends on somebody else so trained that 
he can love beauty and appreciate pictures ; let him write a 
book, and he depends on some one being cultivated enough 
to buy and read and appreciate his book; let him manu- 
facture or invent something for human use, and he is depend- 
ent for his very life on somebody to buy and use the product 
of his manufacture or invention. So, when we have attained 
this perfection of the individualities of the world, springing 
out of that very condition of individual perfection that has 
come as the result of free competition, there must exist the 
most perfect ideal of socialism ; that is, the natural, mutual 
interdependence of all these perfected individualities. So 
socialism and individualism, competition and co-operation, 
are no more contradictory than are the forces centripetal 
and centrifugal that hold the planets in their magnificent 
orbits. I believe that it is under the play of both these 
forces that are to come the perfect individual and the perfect 
society. 

When we have realized our " city of God " here on earth, we 
shall have attained what the churches have always held out 
before themselves as their one ideal and aim, — we have pre- 
pared ourselves for death. For, if we are developed as com- 
pletely as may be into the image and after the ideal of God, 
why, then, we are ready for any condition to which we may 
be called in the days that are to come. 

Where, then, are we to look for our ideal city ? Not in the 
heavens, but growing, by processes of natural development, 
here upon the earth. 



The New City of God 



From God, down out of heaven, 

John saw the city fair 
Descend in gorgeous vision, 

A city of the air. 

By human labor founded 

On rock-hewn truths below, 
To God, up towards the heavens, 

I see the City grow. 

Let us, then, consecrate ourselves to the service of our fel- 
low-men, to the service of God, and to labor towards the 
realization of this age-long hope of the world. 



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